[Beowulf] Intel motherboard BMC

Thu Jun 21 03:07:48 PDT 2018

Jorg, recalling my experience with Intel. I did not come across the problem
with IP address versus Hostname which you have.
However I do recall that I had to configure the Admin user and the
privilege level for that user on the LAN interface. In that case the
additional BMC modules were being used.

I might have the commands written up somewhere.

On 21 June 2018 at 12:02, John Hearns <hearnsj at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Hello Jorg. As you know I have worked a lot with Supermicro machines.
> I also installed Intel machines for Greenwich University, so I have
> experience of setting up IPMI on them.
> I will take time to try to understand your problem!
> Also Intel provides excellent documentation for all its products. Really.
> But you must get the correct part number and search for it.
> I really recommend finding the BMC manual, as I recall that made things a
> lot clearer.
>
> One quick question - are you using the on-board ethernet interface for
> IPMI or are you using the additional hardware module which has its own
> ethernet port?
>
> > It also has a InfiniBand card which does allow booting from it.
> You can PXE boot over a Mellanox Infiniband card. As you probably know
> this involves installing extra firmware on the card.
> In my last job we had an IB only cluster, so booting over IB had to work!
> I guess you do nto need to flash the card, but to be honest running the
> utility is not scary. You just have to get the exact firmware for your card.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 21 June 2018 at 11:20, Tony Brian Albers <tba at kb.dk> wrote:
>
>> Does the BMC itself know its own hostname?
>>
>> /tony
>>
>> On 21/06/18 11:13, Jörg Saßmannshausen wrote:
>> > Dear all,
>> >
>> > I got a bit of a confusing situation with the BMC of some Intel
>> motherboards
>> > which we recently purchased and I am not quite sure what to make out of
>> it.
>> >
>> > We have install a generic user via the IPMI commands on the compute
>> nodes and
>> > I can access the BMC remotely, again via the IPMI command like this:
>> >
>> > $ ipmitool -H node105-bmc -U username -P xxx power status
>> >
>> > This is working, Also, this works:
>> >
>> > $ ipmitool -H 10.0.1.105 -U username -P xxx power status
>> >
>> > A nslookup of node105-bmc gives the right IP address as well.
>> >
>> > However, if I want to use the GUI for the BMC, i.e. opening my browser
>> and
>> > put:
>> >
>> > https://node105-bmc
>> >
>> > in the URL, I get the loging page When I enter my login credentials
>> then,
>> > which are the same as above, I have a problem to log in *IF* I am using
>> the
>> > hostname as address but not *IF* I am using the IP address. Just to add
>> to the
>> > confusion more, on one node the hostname was working.
>> > With problems I mean the browser tells me my login credentials are
>> wrong which
>> > does not happen when I am using the IP address.
>> > Also, I can only use https and not http and for now I got the generic
>> self
>> > signed certificates. I want to change them at one point but right now
>> that is
>> > more on the bottom of my to-do list.
>> >
>> > I find that really odd and I am not quite sure what is going on here.
>> With all
>> > the Supermicro kit I once had I never had these issues before. I was
>> able to
>> > log in regardless of using the hostname or IP address.
>> > So clearly Intel does something here Supermicro did not (at the time).
>> >
>> > The boards in question are Intel S2600BPB ones.
>> >
>> > Has anybody seen this before?
>> >
>> > I got a second issue with these boards. I usually do the normal PXE/NFS
>> boot
>> > and the setup is working well for the other, older Supermicro machines.
>> > However, with the new Intel ones, this is crashing.
>> > The procedure is you are selecting in the boot-menu you want to do a
>> PXE boot
>> > and not boot from the local hard drive.
>> > It then boots the initramfs which seems to be fine. From what I can
>> see, both
>> > during the boot process and from the log files of the DHCP-server, it is
>> > getting the right IP address.
>> > However, when the initramfs hands over to the kernel, it crashes with:
>> > kernel panic! attempt to kill init
>> > and you literally have to pull the plug on the machine, i.e. a hard
>> reset.
>> >
>> > The only time I have seen that was when I did not specify the NIC and
>> when I
>> > had two NICs, it somehow decided to use the other one. I fixed that
>> problem by
>> > defining the interface in the boot-arguments and also the second NIC is
>> not
>> > connected anyway. It also has a InfiniBand card which does allow
>> booting from
>> > it. Again, it is not connected so in theory it should not matter.
>> >
>> > I am stuck here. I am using a 4.x kernel for the PXE boot, so a fairly
>> recent
>> > one. As I said, it works for the older machines but not for the newer
>> ones.
>> >
>> >   I upgraded the whole PXE/NFS boot and that is not working too.
>> >
>> > Does anybody have any ideas here?
>> >
>> > Sorry for asking 2 questions in one email but as they are related I
>> hope that
>> > is ok.
>> >
>> > All the best from a sunny London
>> >
>> > Jörg
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
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>>
>> --
>> Tony Albers
>> Systems administrator, IT-development
>> Royal Danish Library, Victor Albecks Vej 1, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.
>> Tel: +45 2566 2383 / +45 8946 2316
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>> Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing
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>
>
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