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I am trying to get access to the IPMI interface that should exist on my old second hand server. The board seems to be a SuperMicro X8DTL-3F board with what seems like some modifications to it by the chassis manufacturer Crystal Rugged.

The board does have a dedicated IPMI LAN socket however when booting in via a CentOS 6 Live CD, I cant seem to access anything using the IPMI tools. Centos complains the devices are not present either (no /dev/ipmi0)

From what I have read flashing the BIOS might be a bad idea and SuperMicro seems to be an hit and miss on the IPMI BIOS option with the X8 line. Or is this just something disabled by Crystal Rugged via firmware/BIOS.

Or am I just looking at a failed hardware component which is why ipmicfg.exe -summary gives an error "Can not find a valid IPMI device" when booted via a FreeDOS usb stick.

Umesh Sharma
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2 Answers2

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If the linux IPMI tools (eg, ipmitool) report an error stating there is no such /dev/ipmi0 device, the problem might simply be that you have not yet loaded the drivers that provide this device. Try running

modprobe ipmi_devintf
modprobe ipmi_si
Daniel Lawson
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  • I did try a linux version earlier but modprobe ipmi_si would not work for me. Which is why I went down the FreeDOS route. Unfortunately I also opened the case and it seems the BMC led on the motherboard is not blinking. From my various reading it seems that indicates a dead onboard IMPI which would require sending it back to SuperMicro. Given that this board is EOL'd I don't see that happening. :( – Umesh Sharma Jun 07 '17 at 17:06
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Are you trying to see if the IPMI works or if the IPMI works under CentOS?

If the former, why do you need CentOS or any OS, for that matter, to check for IPMI? Just browse to the address that your DHCP server assigns to the IPMI MAC once you connect an ethernet cable to the dedicated IPMI port.

Normally the default login for Supermicro boards tend to be ADMIN/ADMIN

If the web UI works, then worry about why CentOS doesn't show the ipmi device.

If the latter, certain BMC chips will only activate the dedicated LAN port if an active network cable is plugged into the port before you activate the BMC. Have you tried plugging the ethernet cable into an active switch and then turning on the machine. You could also try a cold-reset.

Inxsible
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