Re: [Freeipmi-users] ipmiconsole BMC Implementation with x38ml

[Al Chu]

Hey Kimitoshi,

> Now it's working! Both w/wo solport workaround.

Great to hear.  Could you give me details on your motherboard, or point
me to a webpage with it?  That way I can update the workarounds
documentation to include this motherboard.

> Sol connection seems silently disconnected from the target host through
> the booting process.

I don't think this is that uncommon.  Do you happen to be diskless
booting?  One manufacturer told me that there are lines of ethernet
cards that run out of memory while diskless booting.  So all IPMI
traffic stops during that time.

I can imagine other scenarios where the ethernet is gone during boot.
Tools that were connected via SOL will either hang or eventually
timeout.

> However do you have any idea on what's causing this, and how to 
> correct this behavior?

I don't know of a way to get around it.  From the 'ipmiconsole' side,
all I can do is read/send SOL packets.  When too many packets get lost,
or I get errors from the motherboard, etc. eventually I need to give up.
On one motherboard I tested with, during boot (it seemed) a large number
of SOL packets were dropped by the motherboard, and when SOL was alive
again, the sequence numbers of the newly sent packets were incremented
by a large number.  Eventually I need to give up b/c all the sequence
numbers are out of whack.

Are you seeing 'ipmiconsole' hang forever?  Or does it eventually get an
error or timeout?  It atleast shouldn't hang forever.  If it hangs
forever, do you think you could give me a --debug output of that
particular situation.  (Send as an attachment, since I'm sure the --
debug output will be very long.)

Al


On Thu, 2008-09-25 at 13:05 +0900, ktaka wrote:
> Hi Al,
> 
> Now it's working! Both w/wo solport workaround.
> 
> address@hidden:~# /usr/ccmp/sbin/ipmiconsole -V
> ipmiconsole 0.6.9.beta2
> 
> address@hidden:~# /usr/ccmp/sbin/ipmiconsole -W authcap,solpayloadsize -u
> rt -p rt -h 192.168.20.116
> 
> [SOL established]
> 
> Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 diag ttyS0
> 192.168.20.222
> diag login:
> [closing the connection]
> 
> address@hidden:~# /usr/ccmp/sbin/ipmiconsole -W
> authcap,solpayloadsize,solport -u rt -p rt -h 192.168.20.116
> [SOL established]
> 
> Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 diag ttyS0
> 192.168.20.222
> diag login:
> [closing the connection]
> 
> I could also change the bios setting through sol session.
> Thank you very much for your help.
> 
> Bad news. Maybe a new problem arises. This M/B is somewhat eccentric as
> we've seen.
> Sol connection seems silently disconnected from the target host through
> the booting process.
> (Well it may not be left disconnected, since I have to literally
> disconnect by typing &. before I can recconnect. Maybe just the target
> is not sending the data for some reasons.)
> 
> After I see these text, sol screen go blank and nothing is displayed
> until I hit &. and reconnect sol.
> -----------------
> Version 1.17.1057. Copyright (C) 2007 American Megatrends, Inc.
> Press <F2> to enter setup, <F12> Network Boot
> Bios Version: S3200X38.86B.00.00.0039.030420081339
> Pentium(R) Dual-Core  CPU      E5200  @ 2.50GHz
> 8 GB system memory found
> 
> Press <ESC> to Continue....10
> ----------------
> 
> Behind the seen, the booting process proceeds, and I can see short
> duration of the process after a reconnection. But soon I will be left
> with non proceeding screen, and I have to &. and reconnect.
> 
> This symptom is also seen with such tools as ipmitool, ipmiutils.
> So I think eccentricity of this Mobo is causing this problem.
> Maybe sol setting on the M/B part needs to be investigated.
> 
> However do you have any idea on what's causing this, and how to correct
> this behavior?
> 
> 
> > Hey Kimitoshi,
> > 
> > I think I found a corner case in the code where the non-default port was
> > not used correctly.  Could you give it a shot?
> > 
> > http:// ftp.zresearch.com/pub/freeipmi/qa-
> > release/freeipmi-0.6.9.beta2.tar.gz
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Al
> > 
-- 
Albert Chu
address@hidden
925-422-5311
Computer Scientist
High Performance Systems Division
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory