IPMI and Dell ERA/O

[John Baldwin]

On Saturday 30 August 2008 11:56:01 am Jonathan Bond-Caron wrote:
> On Fri Aug 29 11:24 AM, John Baldwin wrote:
> > 
> > If your BIOS doesn't tell us about the IPMI BMC via ACPI or SMBIOS, 
> > you can try using hints (I've seen machines thave a BMC, but the BIOS 
> > doesn't bother to tell you about it).  Dell boxes I've seen have KCS 
> > at the default address, so you can just do:
> > 
> > hint.ipmi.0.at=isa0
> > hint.ipmi.0.mode=KCS
> > 
> > Either add that to /boot/device.hints or for a test just explicitly 
> > set those variables at the loader prompt before booting.
> > 
> 
> Thanks, that works! 
> 
> Although I don't really understand why? After some digging, I found this:
> (man 4 ipmi)
> BUGS
>      Not all features of the MontaVista driver are supported.
>      Currently, IPMB and BT modes are not implemented.
> 
> 
> But the interface for the Dell 1750 with ERA/O seems to be BT. Luckily it
> works enough for me with KCS (hint.ipmi.0.mode=KCS)
> http://linux.dell.com/ipmi.shtml

Not the same BT.  BT is a different transport for the host OS to talk to the 
BMC that allows for a more asynchronous model.  I've not seen any hardware 
that supports BT yet.

> I'm saying 'works enough' because some readings show as 'disabled', I'm not
> sure if that's because the interface is not BT or the supported IPMI version
> is 1.0 (on the BMC):  
> 
> [root at home /home/jbondc]# ipmitool -I open sdr                 
> CPU 1            | disabled          | ns
> CPU 2            | disabled          | ns
> CPU 3            | disabled          | ns
> CPU 4            | disabled          | ns
> CPU Planar       | 35 degrees C      | ok
> Ambient          | 27 degrees C      | ok
> CPU              | 1.48 Volts        | ok
> CPU 2            | disabled          | ns
> CPU 3            | disabled          | ns
> CPU 4            | disabled          | ns
> +5               | 5.05 Volts        | ok
> +12              | 11.97 Volts       | ok
> +3.3             | 3.29 Volts        | ok
> Battery          | 3.06 Volts        | ok
> +2.5             | 2.55 Volts        | ok
> NIC +2.5         | disabled          | ns
> NIC +1.8         | disabled          | ns
> MemCard A +2.5   | disabled          | ns
> MemCard B +2.5   | disabled          | ns
> MemCard A +1.25  | disabled          | ns
> MemCard B +1.25  | disabled          | ns
> Cover Intrusion  | 0x00              | ok
> Fan Control      | 0x17              | ok
> Fan 1            | 6240 RPM          | ok
> Fan 2            | 6120 RPM          | ok
> ...

This is a property of your BMC.  The fact that you can talk to it at all means 
communication with the BMC is working, and that is all the ipmi(4) driver 
provides (communication with the BMC).

-- 
John Baldwin