IPMI
IPMI - Intelligent Platform Management Interface
Working with IPMI
Einstein , Pumpkin , and Taro have IPMI cards installed. These cards are accessible from the Farm subnet. Their addresses are:
Einstein: 10.0.0.148
Pumpkin: 10.0.0.143
Taro: 10.0.0.147
You will need to use the ADMIN user account with the system's root password to access the IPMI devices.
Tools
Supermicro IPMIView
SuperMicro IPMI control software (over LAN) is installed in /opt/SUPERMICRO/IPMIView/ on Taro. It offers a complete graphical interface for controlling IPMI devices and monitoring sensors. This is the preferred tool for working with IPMI due to its easy to read graphical representations of sensor data. To run IPMI view on Taro first connect via ssh using X forwarding so you can run a graphical application:
$ ssh -X username@taro.unh.edu
Next run the IPMIView program in /opt/SUPERMICRO/IPMIView/ as an administrator
$ sudo /opt/SUPERMICRO/IPMIView/IPMIView20.bin
Screenshot of IPMIView monitoring Einstein's sensor readouts:
From here you can select the machine you want to control by double clicking its name in the menu on the left side of the screen. From there you can login using the ADMIN username and the system's root password.
freeipmi
freeipmi is a set of open source utilities for working with IPMI devices that is available for Linux. It can be installed via the yum repos on Red Hat and Fedora machines with this command:
sudo yum install freeipmi
Currently this package is installed on Einstein, Taro, Pumpkin, and Benfranklin. Here is a description of some of the useful tools bundled with freeipmi:
ipmitool is a Linux command-line tool for sending control messages to remote IPMI devices. This can be used for checking sensor readouts and for sending remote power on/off messages.
ipmiconsole is Linux command-line tool for opening a Serial-over-LAN connection to remote IPMI devices.
Web
[ 10.0.0.148 Einstein ] and [ http://10.0.0.147 Taro ] also have web interfaces. Click the links to access them ( your browser needs to be running on a machine that has a Farm connection for these links to work ).
Setup of system
Taro
Taro has a SuperMicro IPMI card installed.
Initial configuration was through the BIOS (under Advanced). Basically, I just plugged in the card, then set the IP number.
Finally in Taro, you need to add a line for the serial console to work. In inittab add the lines:
# # Run a console on the serial line to the IMPI card # T1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mgetty -r -s 19200 ttyS1 #
And for GRUB you want to add:
...... console=tty0 console=ttyS1,19200n8r
Here is a screenshot of the IPMI monitoring Taro reboot:
Pumpkin
Pumpkin's IPMI controller is a Tyan Computer model m3291.
Configuring Pumpkin's card requires a different procedure from that of Einstein and Taro's cards. A full description is available in the official product manual. I will describe the steps I took to set it up here.
You will need to use Tyan's uh8l utility to change it's configuration from the command line. I've installed it in /usr/bin on pumpkin.
The first step is to flash the card's firmware with the correct version of the firmware for the system's motherboard. The firmware package for Pumpkin's motherboard (Tyan S4985) can be downloaded from Tyan's ftp site at this link. I also have a copy of it locally in my home folder ( /net/home/aduston/ipmi ). Inside the zip file are two other zip files, one is for 4 processors systems, one is for 8 processor systems. Pumpkin's board has four processors, so you will need to use the files in S4985-4P_R20.zip. The firmware files will be extracted to a folder called FW/.
