ipmi serial over lan sol

ipmi-sol.md

Pre-requisites

Install IPMItools using your package manager on laptop and target machine. Load the drivers on the target.

modprobe ipmi_devintf
modprobe ipmi_si

If you see the following, drivers are not loaded.

Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory

IPMI setup

On the target machine run below commands to setup access -

ipmitool lan print 1
ipmitool lan set 1 ipsrc dhcp
ipmitool lan print 1

Make a note of the IP address from the above output. This will be used to connect from your laptop

ipmitool user list 1
ipmitool user set name 3 rockstar
ipmitool user set password 3

You'll get a password prompt. Set the password. whatcouldgowrong in our example. Next -

ipmitool channel setaccess 1 3 link=on ipmi=on callin=on privilege=4
ipmitool user enable 3
ipmitool user list 1

Now from your laptop you can execute commands, like so

ipmitool -I lanplus -U rockstar -P whatcouldgowrong -H <IP address> chassis power (on|off|status)

SOL setup

Enable SOL for root and above user. Enable SOL.

ipmitool sol payload enable 1 2
ipmitool sol payload enable 1 3
ipmitool sol set enabled true 
# try the below command even if this command fails.

Check links 2 and 5 for BIOS and OS configurations necessary. In the BIOS, you can also set DHCP hostname for the BMC, frees you from tracking IP addresses. To access the SOL console, on your local machine use the activate option as shown. Check SOL session help by typing this ~?. To kill a hung SOL session use deactivate.

ipmitool -I lanplus -U rockstar -P whatcouldgowrong -H <IP address> sol (activate|deactivate)

If everything works you will be able to remotely access the target machine's console and make selections in grub menu, etc., My NixOS config settings that worked

# Use the GRUB 2 boot loader.
boot = {
 loader.grub = {
 ...
 extraConfig = "serial --speed=115200 --unit=0 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1; terminal_input serial; terminal_output serial";
 };
kernelModules=["lanplus" ... ];
}
boot.kernelParams = [
 ...
"console=tty0" "console=ttyS0,115200n8"
];
systemd.services."serial-getty@ttyS0".wantedBy = [ "multi-user.target" ];

Appendix

1. http://www.openfusion.net/linux/ipmi_on_centos
2. http://tech.sid3windr.be/2016/02/configuring-ipmi-serial-over-lan-on-debian-8-jessie/
3. https://discuss.pivotal.io/hc/en-us/articles/206396927-How-to-work-on-IPMI-and-IPMITOOL
4. https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/IPMI/en
5. http://wiki.drewhess.com/wiki/IPMI_and_SOL_on_an_Intel_S3200SHV