Help with Supermicro build

[Uniphase7]

hello,

i have a supermicro a1sri-2758f m/b in a supermicro cse-101 case.
i can't get it turn on. i have tried the following.

connected the case to a 12v 6a power supply brick.
tried connecting the stock case power cable to the 4 pin connector.
tried using a picopsu in the atx slot without connecting the 4 pin cable.
tried taking the ram out.
all attempts are not working. it won't power up if i short the power pins.
only a flashing green light on the motherboard.

any suggestions?
thanks.

 

[j_h_o]

There's no fan on this, right? How are you determining that it's not powering up? You're watching the VGA port output?

If you plug the IPMI into a switch with DHCP, does it get an IP address?

 

[Terry Kennedy]

any suggestions?

The flashing green light is almost certainly the IPMI heartbeat. The board should try to obtain an IP address via DHCP (on the dedicated IPMI port). Username / password is usually ADMIN / ADMIN. Supermicro IPMI doesn't normally provide a lot of diagnostic information when the power is off (compare with some other manufacturers where there's a stored video capture of the last successful boot and / or a list of the hex status codes from a boot attempt), but at least you can issue a power on command via IPMI and see if anything happens.

Do you have the correct memory and are you sure it works? If you have more than one memory module, try them one at a time (assuming the motherboard supports single-DIMM operation, which this one does).

Normally I'd also suggest checking for bent pins on the CPU socket, a CPU not supported by the installed BIOS, etc. but since this board has a factory-installed CPU I don't think that is the problem here.

Is the on-board feeper enabled? According to the manual, this would be a jumper between pins 6 and 7 of jumper block JD1. Appendix A lists the beep codes (both of them ).

 

[Uniphase7]

i took everything apart and started over.
i used the picopsu. i think the problem was with the proper placement of the power supply pins from the case to the motherboard.
as soon as i plugged it in the fan started and it successfully booted up.

i'd have to say that the board and case are a little sparse on documentation.

thanks to all for the quick response.

 

[Uniphase7]

with regards to the supermicro a1sri-2758f m/b.
if i install pfsense, are there any bios tweaks i should be using?
i.e. should i be disabling hyper-threading?
i can't find any bios setting to do this.

 

[Zack Hehmann]

I don't see any reason why you would need to turn off HT for pfSense. I have had HT turned on my pfSense box for over 4 years now. If you haven't used pfSense before, you will absolutely love it! It's a fantastic product!!

Have fun!

 

[Netwerkz101]

with regards to the supermicro a1sri-2758f m/b.
if i install pfsense, are there any bios tweaks i should be using?
i.e. should i be disabling hyper-threading?
i can't find any bios setting to do this.

A1SRi-2758F = 8core/8thread ... ie no hyper-threading.
Don't stress if you don't see that option.


http://www.supermicro.com/manuals/motherboard/Atom_on-chip/MNL-1555.pdf

 

[Uniphase7]

thanks!
no worries here. i've used pfsense for years as well.
just coming from a pre-built netgate sg-2440.

 

[Uniphase7]

i have a couple of more questions . . . if you please.

1. i'm using the A1SRi-2758F as a pfsense firewall/router. is there a way to access the console?
since it's the device itself that's handing out ip addresses, how can ipmi work?
on my old netgate, it had a serial port that worked whether the box had an ip address or not.

2. since i'm using a picopsu in a supermicro cse-101 case, it blocks a lot of the fan airflow. is there a recommended fan or work-around?
i'm assuming it's a 60mm x 10mm fan?

thanks.

 

[Zack Hehmann]

You need to be more specific about what console you ware talking about... On my pfSense box, I only needed to utilize a monitor and keyboard for the install an putting IPs on the interfaces I assigned. After that its all WebUI or SSH.

The biggest part of the IPMI question is when do you want to access IPMI? When pfSense is already booted, when it's turned off, or when it's rebooting?

There are a few ways to access IPMI that's part of the pfSense box. It really depends on your network and whether or not you have more than one VLAN or have a separate management subnet. If you are not needing any routing between VLANs cause you are on the same subnet, then it's pretty straight forward. Here are 2 options that I could think of.

1. Assign a static IP to IPMI.
2. Have pfSense reserve and assign an IP address for IPMI.

I think option 1 is the easiest one to do. Just make sure its outside any DHCP scopes you have created so you don't have any duplicate IP address conflicts. IPMI will always have this address. If you don't any other statically assigned devices, you might have to assign a static IP address outside the DHCP scope when the pfSense box is powered off for a while. If not your computer might end up with a 169.254.xxx.xxx APIPA address and won't be able to talk to the IPMI device. If you are just rebooting the pfSense box, having a statically assigned address on you management computer isn't necessary because it will have a DHCP IP address already assigned to it before the reboot and it shouldn't just drop it immediately.

Option 2 works as well. How well it will work depends on how long you configured the the DHCP leases on the pfSense box, when the pfSense box was last on, and the order things took place.

Someone else could chime in on their experience with how long devices keep their DHCP assigned address after the DHCP server is turned off and whether or not it matters if the lease had expired or not. I think they might keep them indefinitely until a DHCP server is turned on, and would probably depend on the device...?


Your motherboard has a serial port also. You should be able to set it up just like your netgate box, right?

 

[Uniphase7]

thanks for the reply.
i will set up the static ip for the ipmi and try that. i do have a separate management vlan. but you're probably right in that it will only let me control pfsense when it is already up and running.
i will also try the serial port option as well. i think that is my best bet. i'll just throw in the same terminal commands i used for the netgate and see what happens.

 

[Zack Hehmann]

What kind of switch gear are you running?

 

[Uniphase7]

i am using a cisco sg300-10.
i'll try the serial port option later today.