FreeBSD and IPMI how-to (was Re: su problem)

[Chuck Tuffli]

On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 6:27 PM, Matthew X. Economou
<xenophon at irtnog.org> wrote:
...
> Would some kind soul point me to a howto for configuring IPMI on
> FreeBSD?  I have a Dell PowerEdge 840 that supports IPMI, but I have
> no idea how to set it up - either in the BIOS or in FreeBSD.  I've
> messed around with ipmitools a little, but I haven't gotten it to
> work.

We have HP boxes here with IPMI (mostly v1.5), and by and large, there
isn't much FreeBSD configuration. The set of things I do for serial
over LAN are the same as for a regular serial console:

1) create /boot.config with the line
-D -S115200

2) create /boot/loader.conf with the lines
boot_multicons="YES"
comconsole_speed="115200"
console="comconsole,vidconsole"

3) change /etc/ttys to allow a login over the console. something similar to
ttyu0   "/usr/libexec/getty std.115200" vt100   on secure

The rest of the configuration is in the BIOS and tends to be vendor
specific. Once this is configured, you can use something like ipmitool
to control power (chassis power on, chassis power reset, ...) and get
a serial console (sol activate). HTH.

---chuck