System Information
Manufacturer: Supermicro
Product Name: X9DBL-3F/X9DBL-iF
In the IPMI section of the BIOS,
set the IP/gateway/netmask addresses. (This can also be done from
inside the Linux Kernel with `ipmitool` after loading the modules.) I
left all the other IPMI settings as default.Manufacturer: Supermicro
Product Name: X9DBL-3F/X9DBL-iF
After a reboot, visit the IP of the IPMI LAN device in a browser from a separate computer. I found everything worked except console redirection (SOL – Serial Over Lan,) as indeed this has to be setup inside the Linux Kernel.
These are the steps I took to make console redirection work:
1. The first thing I did was install the tools and setup the modules.
- Install the needed software:
sudo apt-get install ipmitool freeipmi-tools
- Find the information about the BMC (press ‘q’ to ‘quit’ less when done):
sudo ipmi-locate | less
- I found the information needed in the first few lines of the output as seen here:
Probing KCS device using DMIDECODE... done IPMI Version: 2.0 IPMI locate driver: DMIDECODE IPMI interface: KCS BMC driver device: BMC I/O base address: 0xCA2 Register spacing: 1
- Add the appropriate modules into the Kernel, for the ‘ipmi_si’ one use the information found with ipmi-locate like this:
sudo modprobe ipmi_si type=kcs ports=0xCA2 regspacings=1 sudo modprobe ipmi_devintf sudo modprobe ipmi_msghandler sudo modprobe ipmi_poweroff sudo modprobe ipmi_watchdog
- Now if you “ls -ahl /dev/ipmi*” you should see an ipmi0
- Make a copy of an existing tty and edit it. I’m using vim, but use whatever editor you like:
sudo cp /etc/init/tty1.conf /etc/init/ttyS1.conf sudo vi /etc/init/ttyS1.conf
- Edit the file to reflect ‘ttyS1′ instead of just ‘tty1′. Also edit the last line to use a baud rate of 115200, and tell it the type ’vt100′. Mine looks like this when done:
# ttyS1 - getty # # This service maintains a getty on ttyS1 from the point the system is # started until it is shut down again. start on stopped rc RUNLEVEL=[2345] stop on runlevel [!2345] respawn exec /sbin/getty -8 115200 ttyS1 vt100
- We must pass “console=tty1 console=ttyS1,115200n8″ as options to the command in our boot loader that starts the kernel. Note: the order of options passed to the kernel is important, the last “console” entry defines the ‘default’ console for the kernel. For grub-pc open up /etc/default/grub with your favorite editor and with sudo permissions and change GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=”" line to look like this:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="console=tty1 console=ttyS1,115200n8"
- Don’t forget to update grub after this: (I also changed ‘GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET’ to false, and I uncommented the ‘GRUB_TERMINAL=console’ line.)
sudo update-grub3. Now we’re pretty much ready to connect. The only problem I found was with the launch.jnlp file that the Supermicro webUI spits at you. I’ll show you the edits I made to make it work:
- Again visit the IP pointed at your IPMI and login in to the webUI. Click the ‘Launch SOL’ button under the ‘Remote Control’ tab, choose to save the file instead of opening it in your browser’s web java application (‘IcedTea java web start’ in my case.)
- Towards the beginning of the file, look for these lines:
<property name="jnlp.packEnabled" value="true"/> <property name="jnlp.versionEnabled" value="true"/>
- Copy those two lines and scroll down a little until you see the distribution you are running and paste them into the there. I did it for each distribution so I didn’t have to think about it. I ended up with entries looking like this:
<resources os="Linux" arch="x86_64"> <property name="jnlp.packEnabled" value="true"/> <property name="jnlp.versionEnabled" value="true"/> <nativelib href="liblinux_x86_64.jar" download="eager" version="1.0.3"/> </resources>
- Lastly, scroll to the end of the file where you will see a list of “argument” xml tags. The one below the one that contains your IP probably contains a seemingly random string of letters, but it needs to be changed to the username you setup to login to the IPMI webUI, and the one below needs to be your password. Like this:
<argument>123.123.123.123</argument> <argument>[username]</argument> <argument>[password]</argument>
- Save the file and run it and you should now be ready to sit in front
of the machine remotely. Reboot the server to watch it boot up, offer
you the opportunity to enter the BIOS, and then offer you a login
prompt.
EDIT 07/06/13:
Corrected the line:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="console=tty0 console=ttyS1,115200n8"
to:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="console=tty1 console=ttyS1,115200n8"Also,
Corrected the line:
exec /sbin/getty -8 115200 tty1 vt100
to:
exec /sbin/getty -8 115200 ttyS1 vt100Also,
Removed the lines from ttyS1.conf pertaining to ‘containers’:
and (
not-container or
container CONTAINER=lxc or
container CONTAINER=lxc-libvirt)
Everything is running smoothly after this, even when networking is turned off in the kernel.
