Guide on updating old iLO 3 versions to a more current one

Updating iLO 3.md

Updating a HP(E) server from iLO 3 version 1.55 to version 1.94

This short document explain how to resolve the issues arising when trying to update an old (Gen7) HP(E) server to the most recent iLO 3 (HPE Integrated Lights-Out) version, which solves a great number of security and usability issues.

Issues

• Can't connect to iLO with a modern browser, for lack of supported TLS protocol version
  • solved by using FirefoxPortable version 31
  • and in the Firefox31 portable configuration, in the about:config settings, set security.tls.version.min (the minimum acceptable version of the TLS protocol) to 0 in order to be able to negociate down to TLS 1.0 (even if iLO 3 can do 1.1). Keep in mind your browser is now (even more) vulnerable to a host of attacks, do not connect to any potentially hostile host with it.
  • in the iLO web console, checking the option "Enforce AES/3DES Encryption" in Administration / Security / Encryption helps by enabling the best iLO 3 got to offer
• Can't connect with a modern OpenSSH in default configuration, because only a ssh-dss key is offered ("Unable to negotiate with w.x.y.z port 22: no matching host key type found. Their offer: ssh-dss")
  • enable ssh-dss on the command line, like so: ssh -oHostKeyAlgorithms=+ssh-dss user@ilo3host
  • alternatively solved by using PuTTY 0.76 that still supported such keys. More recent versions might also still offer support for this key type by default
• Can't update from 1.55 to the most recent versions, with an unclear error message
  • solved by updating to the intermediary iLO 3 version 1.57 first
  • then from iLO 3 version 1.57 to iLO 3 version 1.94
  • As per HPE, if one was running an even earlier version (before 1.20) they'd have to upgrade to iLO 3 version 1.20 first
• Even after upgrading, getting the error ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH when trying to connect with a modern browser (e.g. happening with Chrome 94 at the time of writing)
  • this is not solvable anymore, the best TLS version iLO 3 can offer is TLS v1.1 that is deprecated and disabled in all modern browsers

Ressources

• A list of old iLO versions
• Page about solving the ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH error
• iLO Wikipedia page

Contact: bruno.rohee@siginfo.fr

Screenshot from ilo System:

I had to re-do this again these days to IPMI a server that was down. Spent couple hours trying to configure Java an old version jre-8u162) and this time I couldn't make it work even by disabling every thing possible (newer TLS versions for ex) like I had to do last time.

Fortunately, there is a much better solution, that is straight forward and for some reasons, almost no internet sites or comments mention it, I don't know why not even HP from the iLO interface mention it even it's by far the best and easiest solution : HPE Lights-Out Standalone Remote Console for Windows via https://support.hpe.com/connect/s/softwaredetails?language=en_US&softwareId=MTX_bc8e3ffa59904ec3b505d9964d

Just install it, run it and you can connect to your server. No need to use and thinker hours to have one of the proposed solutions that never work.

@zotabee I don't know on which version of Windows you were running this "HPE Lights-Out Standalone Remote Console for Windows", but in my case, on Windows 11, I also got an SSL/TLS error and I couldn't connect.
What did work was the iOS application. But on such a small screen (iPhone), unless you use an external Bluetooth keyboard, it provides a very bad user experience.

@dalbani This is really strange because I'm on the last stable Win11 22H2 x64 and this app just worked straight away. Glad you could find an alternative though!

Just download an older version of any browser. I downloded an old opera from here: https://get.geo.opera.com/pub/opera/desktop/64.0.3417.73/win/
(on windows you need to delete the task scheduler entry for opera auto-update)

anyone else having this issue, I tried this and it worked right away.
use docker kaixhin/vnc it's 14.04 with a vnc in it, recommend using VNC as old firefox had issues running on ubuntu 22.04 .
So once docker image is running, vnc in and then use and old version of firefox , I had ILO3 V1.3 and ILO4 V1.13 so I used version 30.0 and was able to access the ILO management panel, then just upload your new bin and you'll be upgraded in no time :)

if you're looking for the updated ILO bins, I got mine from here and it working for ILO3 & ILO4 https://pingtool.org/latest-hp-ilo-firmwares/

On a Mac M2 MacOS 13, using Waterfox Classic and JRE 1.7 works with minimal fuss. Need to downgrade security in about:config, enable TLS 1.1 in the Java control panel, etc. as described above. See https://classic.waterfox.net/

That restores the use of Java remote console for HPE BladeSystem BL460c G7 servers.

Not a problem with any Firefox version: about:config, search for security.tls.version.min, change to 2 temporarily, access your device. Works for me.