Modern servers come with a basement management controller (BMC), a little extra computer that allows remote console access, provides all kinds of hardware status information and even allows power control (i.e. turning the server on and off). Dell’s implementation is called iDRAC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
IPMI is a commonly used protocol to access this functionality, even over the network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remembered using ipmitool over the network to access the iDRAC in the past. The more I was surprised that suddenly it only gave me an error message:<\/p>\n\n\n
$ ipmitool -H server-mgmt -U root mc info\nPassword:\nGet Session Challenge command failed\nError: Unable to establish LAN session\nGet Device ID command failed<\/code><\/span>Code language:<\/span> plaintext<\/span> (<\/span>plaintext<\/span>)<\/span><\/small><\/pre>\n\n\nI found the solution in .pQd’s log<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\nApparently recent firmware versions (in 2016) stopped supporting the default protocol and only continued to support the lanplus protocol, which can be selected with the -I lanplus<\/em> option. I’m not sure, if I saw this documented somewhere, but it seems, that’s what Dell always intended to use. So the proper command is:<\/p>\n\n\nipmitool -H server-mgmt -I lanplus -U root mc info<\/code><\/span>Code language:<\/span> Bash<\/span> (<\/span>bash<\/span>)<\/span><\/small><\/pre>\n\n\nIf you are using OpenIPMI, the proper option is –driver-type=LAN_2_0<\/em>, so e.g. for reading sensor values you can use:<\/p>\n\n\nipmi-sensors -h server-mgmt -u root -P --driver-type=LAN_2_0<\/code><\/span>Code language:<\/span> Bash<\/span> (<\/span>bash<\/span>)<\/span><\/small><\/pre>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Modern servers come with a basement management controller (BMC), a little extra computer that allows remote console access, provides all kinds of hardware status information and even allows power control (i.e. turning the server on and off). Dell’s implementation is called iDRAC. IPMI is a commonly used protocol to access this functionality, even over the … Continue reading ipmitool stopped working on Dell iDRAC over LAN<\/span>