IPMI and FreeBSD

Submitted by jurgen on 18/05/2009

Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) is a remote system administrator’s dream, this facility can either come in the form of an add on card (PCI or the like) or we are now begining to see versions that are built into the BIOS. IPMI gives you another Network Interface port on the back of your server which you can access independently away from the machine so that in the case of failure (hard lock, kernel lock, etc) and unavailable remote access, you can directly query the BIOS and power systems via a web interface or utility so that you can check the logs or power cycle your system.

For FreeBSD and Linux users, to access the IPMI features you will either need a DHCP server on your network so you can use the software that came with it to scan for IPMI or you can use ipmitool. ipmitool is a utility primarily developed for Linux but theRE is a FreeBSD port which is mostly functional and you can then query the IPMI directly and change its settings. In our environment, we do not have a DHCP server but to set IP’s manually we are required to set up using this tool. To install ipmitool on FreeBSD complete the following: 

 
#portinstall ipmitool

For ipmitool to function you require the kernel module to load this you can run: 
 
#kldload ipmi

if you wish for it to continue after your next reboot please add the following to your /boot/loader.conf
ipmi_load="YES"

Now that you have it loaded you can then use ipmitool to interrogate it. 
$ipmitool lan print 1

and this will show you all of the settings for the IPMI NIC and there current values.
 
$ipmitool lan set 1 ipaddr <ip address>
$ipmitool lan set 1 netmask <netmask>

This will set the external IP address for your IPMI NIC, once you have this set you can use your favrouite
browser and go “http://ip address” and the default login is usually admin/admin.



references:
Wikipedia
IPMI Tool

Comments

What might be wrong?

\# uname -a
FreeBSD dl360.local 7.1-STABLE FreeBSD 7.1-STABLE #1: Fri Mar 20 22:55:17 PDT 2009 root@dl360.local:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC i386
\# kldload ipmi.ko
kernel: ppc0: parallel port not found.
kernel: sio1: configured irq 3 not in bitmap of probed irqs 0
kernel: sio1: port may not be enabled
\# kldstat
Id Refs Address Size Name 1 5 0xc0400000 a07e48 kernel 2 2 0xc0e08000 6a45c acpi.ko 3 1 0xc4f0e000 a000 ipmi.ko 4 1 0xc4ec7000 3000 smbus.ko
\# ipmitool lan print 1
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Channel 1 is not a LAN channel
\#

4 Sep 2009 | Anonymous (not verified)