VMware ESX 4.1u1, ipmitool 1.8.11, Dell C2100 with BMC or Dell R710 with Enterprise iDRAC6

ESXi

Ever needed to gain access to the iDRAC or BMC in your Dell machine? Recently, I needed remote console (KVM) access to a server. I knew that the BMC that provides console access on a Dell C2100 had been configured, but I didn't know the IP address. Turns out if you compile ipmitool as a 32-bit binary, then you can copy it over to an ESXi host and get information about the BMC/iDRAC. The steps to do this are:

Download ipmitool from SourceForge

Decompress

ryan@buggy:~/src$ tar zxvf ipmitool-1.8.11.tar.gz

Compile. Note that I added the -static linker option. The resulting binary I got back was not statically compiled, but worked. Omitting the -static flag caused ipmitool to throw compile errors, so I left it.
```
ryan@buggy:~/src/ipmitool-1.8.11$ ./configure CFLAGS=-m32 LDFLAGS=-static
```

Copy the binary to your ESXi server

ryan@buggy:~/src/ipmitool-1.8.11$ scp ./src/ipmitool qaesx01.qa.lan:/scratch/

Log into the ESXi server and run the program from /scratch

root@C2100:~ # cd /scratch/
root@C2100:/vmfs/volumes/4f364c4f-5e22faef-0987-e89a8f229d27 # ./ipmitool shell
ipmitool> lan set 1 ipsrc static
# If your eth0 is tagged (802.1q), then you may need to set the VLAN
# to remove the 802.1q tag, use "lan set 1 vlan id off"
#ipmitool> lan set 1 vlan id 43
ipmitool> lan set 1 ipaddr 10.1.1.151
ipmitool> lan set 1 netmask 255.255.255.0
ipmitool> lan set 1 defgw ipaddr 10.1.1.1
ipmitool> lan set 1 auth ADMIN MD5,PASSWORD
ipmitool> lan set 1 arp respond on
ipmitool> lan set 1 arp generate on
ipmitool> lan set 1 arp interval 5
ipmitool> lan set 1 access on
ipmitool> user set name 2 root
ipmitool> user set password 2 BuggyP@ssw0rd
ipmitool> channel setaccess 1 2 callin=on link=on privilege=4
ipmitool> user enable 2
ipmitool> lan print 1
Set in Progress         : Set Complete
Auth Type Support       : NONE MD2 MD5 PASSWORD
Auth Type Enable        : Callback : MD2 MD5
                        : User     : MD2 MD5
                        : Operator : MD2 MD5
                        : Admin    : MD5 PASSWORD
                        : OEM      :
IP Address Source       : Static Address
IP Address              : 10.1.1.151
Subnet Mask             : 255.255.255.0
MAC Address             : 00:22:19:27:53:10
SNMP Community String   : public
IP Header               : TTL=0x40 Flags=0x40 Precedence=0x00 TOS=0x10
Default Gateway IP      : 0.0.0.0
Default Gateway MAC     : 00:00:00:00:00:00
Backup Gateway IP       : 0.0.0.0
Backup Gateway MAC      : 00:00:00:00:00:00
802.1q VLAN ID          : Disabled
802.1q VLAN Priority    : 0
RMCP+ Cipher Suites     : 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14
Cipher Suite Priv Max   : aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
                        :     X=Cipher Suite Unused
                        :     c=CALLBACK
                        :     u=USER
                        :     o=OPERATOR
                        :     a=ADMIN
                        :     O=OEM

Linux

On an R710 system, when I tried to run ipmitool, I was met with the following error:

root@R710:~# ipmitool lan print
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory
Get Channel Info command failed
Invalid channel: 255

The fix is to insert the ipmi kernel module and create the /dev/ipmi0 character device:

root@R710:~# modprobe ipmi_devintf
root@R710:~# modprobe ipmi_msghandler
root@R710:~# modprobe ipmi_si
root@R710:~# cat /proc/devices | grep ipmi
247 ipmidev

Take the major number for ipmidev (247 in above example; your machine will probably be different) and create the character block device /dev/ipmi0:

root@R710:~# mknod -m 0600 /dev/ipmi0 c 247 0

Now it works

root@R710:~# lsmod | grep ipmi
ipmi_si                39597  0
ipmi_devintf            7203  0
ipmi_msghandler        35197  2 ipmi_si,ipmi_devintf


root@R710:~# ipmitool lan print
Set in Progress         : Set Complete
Auth Type Support       : NONE MD2 MD5 PASSWORD
Auth Type Enable        : Callback : MD2 MD5
                        : User     : MD2 MD5
                        : Operator : MD2 MD5
                        : Admin    : MD2 MD5
                        : OEM      : MD2 MD5
IP Address Source       : Static Address
IP Address              : 10.5.0.5
Subnet Mask             : 255.255.255.0
MAC Address             : 00:24:e8:7a:8e:0f
SNMP Community String   : public
IP Header               : TTL=0x40 Flags=0x40 Precedence=0x00 TOS=0x10
Default Gateway IP      : 10.5.0.1
Default Gateway MAC     : 00:00:00:00:00:00
Backup Gateway IP       : 0.0.0.0
Backup Gateway MAC      : 00:00:00:00:00:00
802.1q VLAN ID          : Disabled
802.1q VLAN Priority    : 0
RMCP+ Cipher Suites     : 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14
Cipher Suite Priv Max   : aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
                        :     X=Cipher Suite Unused
                        :     c=CALLBACK
                        :     u=USER
                        :     o=OPERATOR
                        :     a=ADMIN
                        :     O=OEM

Accessing IPMI Remotely

Compile ipmitool with the lanplus interface enabled

ryan@buggy:~/src/ipmitool-1.8.11$ ./configure --enable-intf-lanplus

Access remote host via IPMI

ryan@buggy:~/src/ipmitool-1.8.11$ ./src/ipmitool -I lanplus -H 10.1.1.151 -U root -P 'BuggyP@ssw0rd' -v shell
ipmitool> lan print 1
Set in Progress         : Set Complete
Auth Type Support       : NONE MD2 MD5 PASSWORD
Auth Type Enable        : Callback : MD2 MD5
                        : User     : MD2 MD5
                        : Operator : MD2 MD5
                        : Admin    : MD5 PASSWORD
                        : OEM      :
IP Address Source       : Static Address
IP Address              : 10.1.1.151
Subnet Mask             : 255.255.255.0
MAC Address             : 00:22:19:27:53:10
SNMP Community String   : public
IP Header               : TTL=0x40 Flags=0x40 Precedence=0x00 TOS=0x10
Default Gateway IP      : 0.0.0.0
Default Gateway MAC     : 00:00:00:00:00:00
Backup Gateway IP       : 0.0.0.0
Backup Gateway MAC      : 00:00:00:00:00:00
802.1q VLAN ID          : Disabled
802.1q VLAN Priority    : 0
RMCP+ Cipher Suites     : 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14
Cipher Suite Priv Max   : aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
                        :     X=Cipher Suite Unused
                        :     c=CALLBACK
                        :     u=USER
                        :     o=OPERATOR
                        :     a=ADMIN
                        :     O=OEM

Ryan A. Chapman

Configuring BMC or iDRAC from ESXi or Linux

ESXi

Linux

Accessing IPMI Remotely