Install and configure IPMI on Linux

The IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) provides management and monitoring capabilities independently of the host system’s operating system, firmware, BIOS and CPU. IPMI provides an easy way to manage a server/computer that may be unresponsive or powered off by using a network connection to hardware. This tutorial will guide you that how to install and configure IPMI on Linux

The Installation of IPMI is pretty simple:

Once the IPMI is installed then from a local system/machine you can use ipmitool to access and manage all kinds of useful stuff:

IPMI commands:

To check firmware version:

To reset management controller:

To check field-replaceable-unit details:

To check Sensor output:

To check Chassis commands:

# turn on front panel identify light (default 15s)

# initiate a soft-shutdown via acpi

# issue a hard poweroff, wait for 1sec, power on

# issue a hard power off

# issue a hard power on

# issue a hard reset

To Modify boot device for next reboot:

For Logging:

For remote access, you need to setup user and network settings, either at the boot time on the DRAC card itself or from the OS using ipmitool:

Display/reset password for default root user (userid ‘2’)

Display/configure lan settings:

Once this is configured you will be able to connect using the ‘lan’ interface to ipmitool, like this:

which will prompt you for ipmi root password or you can also do the following:

and then use that password file instead of manually entering it each time:

I am using an ‘ipmi’ alias that looks like this:

which allows you to do the much shorter

OR

Finally, if you configure serial console redirection in the bios as follows:

Serial Communication -> Serial Communication: On with Console Redirection via COM2
Serial Communication -> External Serial Connector: COM2
Serial Communication -> Redirection After Boot: Disabled

then we can setup standard serial access in “grub.conf” and “inittab” on com2/ttyS1 and get serial console access via IPMI serial-over-lan using the ‘lanplus’ interface:

which we can use via a shell function:

used like:

isol 192.168.1.111

isol

Cheers!!