On Tue, 30 Jul 2013, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote: > I've used ipmitool any number of times, but never for more than > getting info, or setting the server name on a Dell LCD screen. > [....] Getting IPMI up and running is standard in our shop, which tends to be dominated by SuperMicro gear: 1. Boot machine to get IMPI MAC address 2. Add said MAC to DHCP/DNS 3. In BIOS, tell machine to use DHCP for IPMI net config 4. In BIOS, make sure IPMI serial-over-LAN is active 5. Reboot machine; use browser to connect to IMPI 6. Immediately reset ADMIN password. Then add other user accounts as necessary. At that point, the new machine can be manipulated via a web browser or by ipmitool running on another machine. To date, we only set local IPMI user accounts, though some implementations advertise the ability to use remote LDAP accounts as well. If the machine's OS can use a serial console, then a remote ipmitool can serve as a new-fangled serial concentrator: ipmitool -I lanplus -U $user -H $hostname sol activate (You might consider adding "-C3" to that invocation, which specifies the standard cipher suites to protect wire-level communications.) I've found that IPMI versions don't necessarily attach to the same COM port, so it might take some tweaking to figure out if your getty should be on ttyS1, ttyS2, or whatever. You can build this right into a kickstart file, e.g., bootloader [...] --append="console=tty0 console=ttyS1,115200n8" Finally, I'll note that I'm not terribly fond of IPMI implementations that share an RJ-45 port with eth0 or eth1, though I've had to use them on a couple occasions. I prefer a dedicated interface. -- Paul Heinlein heinlein at madboa.com 45°38' N, 122°6' W