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I am having a very frustrating time configuring the IPMI interface on a Supermicro box.

Unfortunately with IPMI it is not always clear which interface is being used by the BMC. The Supermicro Embedded BMC Manual says that the active interface is determined during the initial power up:

Note 1: If you wish to use the IPMI-dedicated LAN port for your network connections, be sure to connect an RJ45 cable to your dedicated LAN port before you activate the BMC (at first power-on or cold reset). Otherwise, the BMC will look for a shared LAN port to connect to if the IPMI-dedicated LAN cable is not detected upon BMC activation.

  1. Can I use ipmitool to tell if this system is using the IPMI-dedicated LAN port or the shared LAN port?
  2. Can I use ipmitool to see if the link is up? For comparison, it is easy to see if a link is up on linux -- simply use ifconfig or ip addr and look for the 'UP' flag. Is there an equivalent with ipmitool?

Some details:

  • I wasn't here when the system was powered on. I cannot powercycle the system right now.
  • There is an Ethernet cable plugged into the dedicated IPMI port, the link light is on and ipmitool lan print 1 shows a static IP is assigned. But the BMC is not responding to ping.
  • I've tried ipmitool bmc reset cold and reconfiguring the BMC with a new IP and it still doesn't work.
  • I suspect that the BMC is using the non-dedicated LAN port 0 (e.g. 'eth0' the first LAN port used by the host). This is incorrect -- that port is in use by the host and is connected to a public LAN.

** Update **

The ipmitool man page says that lan get can be used to display this information, but lan get active does not work:

% ipmitool -I lanplus -H 172.16.100.100 -U ADMIN -P secret lan get active
Invalid LAN command: get
%
Stefan Lasiewski
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  • FWIW, we have the same issue when we give power to the computer before plugging in the ipmi network interface. We've only been able to recover by unplugging the server, waiting awhile and plugging it back in :( – R. S. Mar 01 '13 at 21:22
  • Yes I've discovered the same thing. See my other answer here: http://serverfault.com/a/370297/36178 – Stefan Lasiewski Mar 01 '13 at 21:40
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    I've been able to avoid the unplug/wait/plug cycle with commands like `ipmitool bmc reset warm` and `ipmitool bmc reset cold`. – Stefan Lasiewski Nov 12 '13 at 18:16

4 Answers4

5

The following works if you are SSH'd in to the server, so assumedly it should work via the "ipmitool -I lanplus" method as well:

ipmitool raw 0x30 0x70 0x0c 0

The results are as follows:

00 = Dedicated
01  = Shared
02  = Failover

To change the mode, run:

(Dedicated) ipmitool raw 0x30 0x70 0x0c 1 0 
(Shared) ipmitool raw 0x30 0x70 0x0c 1 1
(Failover) ipmitool raw 0x30 0x70 0x0c 1 2

http://www.supermicro.com/support/faqs/faq.cfm?faq=11639

magz
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2

There's something wrong with the layout (wrong tab space) in the ipmitool man page at die.net. See the correctly formatted ipmitool man page at man.archlinux.org instead.

The lan get is below the delloem (for Dell poweredge server ex. Dell R620)

ipmitool -I lanplus -H 172.16.100.100 -U ADMIN -P secret delloem lan get
ipmitool -I lanplus -H 172.16.100.100 -U ADMIN -P secret delloem lan get active

However, you use the Supermicro server. I think the command beyond won't work.
You may need to enter BIOS to set ipmi to the option share over lan.

I don't know how to use ipmitool to set and get ipmi share over lan information except Dell server.

Ashark
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hsinfu
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0

For ASUS ASMBx-iKVM

ipmitool raw 0x32 0x71 0x00 0x01 0x01 # set ipmi/bmc to use shared nic

FYR: https://tin6150.github.io/psg/ipmi.html

Fisher Wei
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I've had lots of trouble with BMC as well. If you don't succeed with the ipmitool, your best bet is to get direct access to the machine somehow so you can setup a static IP in the BIOS of that machine. Trust me, doing it this way saves you A LOT of trouble.

Once the IP is set statically, it should be accessible from outside or wherever you can ping the BMC from. Using DHCP proved a bit too unstable for productive environments for my taste.

So do it while setting up the machine in the rack and save yourself hours of work by spending some minutes in the first place. ;)

Scott Pack
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