Re: [xcat-user] [External] Support for IBM Remote Supervisor Supervisor II (RSA-II)

[Vinícius F. <fe...@ve...>]

I think I will throw in the towel.

My understanding was exactly what you’ve said Jarrod. IPMI over LAN should work. From the docs it states that it has an IPMI 2.0 interface, but it does not work.

I’ve managed to upgrade the BMC Firmware to the latest one (1.44) using a DOS disk image that I’ve uploaded to the RSA-II and controlled remotely from an old Windows XP VM with IE6 and Java 1.6. It was a blast.

But it didn’t worked either.

I’ve found the specsheet and it confirms that it should have and should work:
<https://www.salland.eu/pdf/Server/IBM_x3550.pdf>
[preview.png]
IBM_x3550<https://www.salland.eu/pdf/Server/IBM_x3550.pdf>
PDF Document · 750 KB<https://www.salland.eu/pdf/Server/IBM_x3550.pdf>


I may be missing something that I don’t know/don’t understand. Not sure if a FOD (Feature on Demand) is also required or not. I can use ipmitool inband, but not outband, the IP address does not answer. Tried to change the address, configure both cards on the switch to see if at least the MAC Address of the BMC shows up, but nothing. Nothing shows up.

I’ve came across some information about things like OSA SMBridge but it didn’t make sense because I have to run those on the runnning OS, which defeats the purpose of an BMC interface for Out of Band management and also those software are only for RHEL 2/3/4/5. Also there is something about: "IPMI driver and IBM mapping layer installation”, that I could not figure out.

If there’s anything still in your hard drive on your head please let me know. I don’t think the machine is broken or defective because I have three of them, and all of them are with the same issues.

Some outputs from the frustration:


[root@x3550-1 ~]# dmesg | grep BMC

[    9.414441] ipmi_si ipmi_si.0: Found new BMC (man_id: 0x000002, prod_id: 0x0012, dev_id: 0x20)

[    9.680918] ipmi_si ipmi_si.0: Found BMC with sensor interface v3.10 2006-06-29 on interface 0

-x-x-x-


[root@x3550-1 ~]# ipmitool lan print

Set in Progress         : Set Complete

Auth Type Support       : NONE MD2 MD5 PASSWORD

Auth Type Enable        : Callback :

                        : User     : MD2 MD5 PASSWORD

                        : Operator : MD2 MD5 PASSWORD

                        : Admin    : MD2 MD5 PASSWORD

                        : OEM      :

IP Address Source       : BIOS Assigned Address

IP Address              : 172.25.0.99

Subnet Mask             : 255.255.255.0

MAC Address             : 00:21:5e:0c:01:7d

SNMP Community String   : public

IP Header               : TTL=0x40 Flags=0x40 Precedence=0x00 TOS=0x10

BMC ARP Control         : ARP Responses Enabled, Gratuitous ARP Disabled

Gratituous ARP Intrvl   : 2.0 seconds

Default Gateway IP      : 172.25.0.254

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          : 1

802.1q VLAN Priority    : 0

RMCP+ Cipher Suites     : 0,1,2,3

Cipher Suite Priv Max   : uaaaXXXXXXXXXXX

                        :     X=Cipher Suite Unused

                        :     c=CALLBACK

                        :     u=USER

                        :     o=OPERATOR

                        :     a=ADMIN

                        :     O=OEM

Bad Password Threshold  : Not Available

-x-x-x-


[root@x3550-1 ~]# /opt/ibm/toolscenter/asu/asu64 rebootbmc

IBM Advanced Settings Utility version 9.30.79N

Licensed Materials - Property of IBM

(C) Copyright IBM Corp. 2007-2012 All Rights Reserved

 Error communicating with BMC.

 If the system contains a BMC then check your

 IPMI driver and IBM mapping layer installation.

 If the system does not contain a BMC then remove

 the BMC patch from ASU by issuing the ASU patchremove

 command with the correct patch #.


 Error communicating with RSA.

 If the system contains an RSA then check your

 RSA Daemon installation.

 If the system does not contain a RSA then remove

 the RSA patch from ASU by issuing the ASU patchremove

 command with the correct patch #.


Could not find IPMI driver.  Please check your IPMI driver and IBM

mapping layer installation.

-x-x-x-


[root@x3550-1 ~]# dmesg | grep RSA

[    2.459038] usb 4-1: Product: IBM RSA2

[    2.471591] input: IBM IBM RSA2 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.2/usb4/4-1/4-1:1.0/input/input2

[    2.522290] hid-generic 0003:04B3:4001.0002: input,hidraw1: USB HID v1.10 Keyboard [IBM IBM RSA2] on usb-0000:00:1d.2-1/input0

[    2.529608] input: IBM IBM RSA2 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.2/usb4/4-1/4-1:1.1/input/input3

[    2.529779] hid-generic 0003:04B3:4001.0003: input,hidraw2: USB HID v1.10 Mouse [IBM IBM RSA2] on usb-0000:00:1d.2-1/input1

-x-x-x-


[root@cloyster ~]# ipmitool -I lanplus -H 172.25.0.99 -U USERID -P PASSW0RD lan print

Error: Unable to establish IPMI v2 / RMCP+ session

[root@cloyster ~]# ipmitool -I lan -H 172.25.0.99 -U USERID -P PASSW0RD lan print

Error: Unable to establish LAN session

Error: Unable to establish IPMI v1.5 / RMCP session


Thanks all.


On 10 Jan 2024, at 12:35, Jarrod Johnson <jjo...@le...> wrote:

So the mini-RSA card added remote video, ssh and web (and some things for IBM director at the time).  The original x3550 should have provided IPMI and SOL out of the box (although the vintage is such that I think you need IPMI 1.5, which I haven't tested in a long time).  Very vague in my memory, but I was arrund for those days.

Fun fact, that architecture is why to this day we have an oddity in our firmware, that IPMI connects to ttyS0 and SSH connects to ttyS1, it was for backwards compatiblity to this time when the mini-RSA brought it's own serial uart and thus IPMI only worked to the builtin uart and ssh only worked to the mini-RSA's uart.


________________________________
From: Vinícius Ferrão via xCAT-user <xca...@li...>
Sent: Tuesday, January 9, 2024 6:41 PM
To: xca...@li... <xca...@li...>
Cc: Vinícius Ferrão <fe...@ve...>
Subject: [External] [xcat-user] Support for IBM Remote Supervisor Supervisor II (RSA-II)


Hello,

This thread may be offtopic on this list but I don’t have any other places to go with people may understand the question.

I’ve bought this card thinking that it would provide IPMI for being controlled by Confluent (and xCAT maybe...) but I think I misunderstood what the device provides.

Anyone knows if this card is supported? Does it provide IPMI over LAN?


Long story:
There’s an old IBM System x3550 (the first one) that I use to test things, and I was trying to add it as a compute node of Confluent but although it has an OOB Ethernet Interface named as management it didn’t even linked when a network cable was plugged.

So after spending countless hours trying to figure it out I’ve discovered that I should have an additional IBM RSA-2 Slimline Card on the system for this management port work.

I think I incorrectly assumed that this card would provide a classic IPMI over LAN interface since the server already has BMC configuration on the BIOS that I can even set the LAN settings like the IP address.

So I sourced one card in the used market and after 12h fighting with the card due to wrong firmwares, mismatches between the system BIOS and the car and broken download links on IBM website and that frustrating Fix Central webpage.

There still an BMC update that I could not do because the update package simply does not find the BMC on the server. Probably because the package is for EL5 and I’m running EL7.

After fighting with this I was able to finally connect to the web interface that the RSA-2 provided. I can shutdown and power on the server, see some information and that’s it.

However I cannot control the system using ipmitool remotely and when using ipmitool in band the LAN settings are different from those on the RSA-II card. So I think all this configuration on the BIOS about the BMC, the ipmitool lan commands are all bogus on this system.

Basically the card is pretty much useless and I just wasted time and little money in this journey.

So is there any chance of making this work? Any workaround? Anyone that feels the pain or knows the hardware enough to fill in the gaps what I may be missing?

Thanks all.



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