Supermicro IPMI SOL

[trumee]

Hello,

I have a X11SAT-F motherboard with IPMI support running linux under EFI mode. I want to use SOL for the remote server. I appended the kernel command line to the following,

linux   /@/vmlinuz-4.9.95-gentoo root=ZFS=rpool/ROOT/gentoo ro spl.spl_hostid=0xa8c06f01 console=tty0 console=ttyS1,115200n8

In addition the /etc/inittab was modified to the following,

s1:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -L 115200 ttyS1 vt100

Using these two changes, the SOL does come up. However, it stop outputting midway through the boot. The output is like so

The motherboard has three serial ports.

# setserial -g /dev/ttyS[012]
/dev/ttyS0, UART: 16550A, Port: 0x03f8, IRQ: 4
/dev/ttyS1, UART: 16550A, Port: 0x0248, IRQ: 7
/dev/ttyS2, UART: 16550A, Port: 0xf0a0, IRQ: 19

I am using the second port ttyS1 in the output above. I am not sure whether i should be using ttyS2.

Has anybody used SOL on their Supermicro motherboard?

Thanks

 

[Jeggs101]

Why not just use ipmitool sol activate? That'll work every time and is way less complex.

 

[vanfawx]

I haven't setup a serial console in quite a few years, but it looks like you're using systemd, so the process will be different than updating inittab, which AFAIK, no longer serves a function in modern linux distros.

systemd for Administrators, Part XVI

The above link discusses setting up a serial console on systemd. It looks like your serial console works from initial boot, up until the handoff from initrd to the OS, so you probably just need to activate the appropriate service.

Why are you choosing SOL over IPMI out of curiosity? I only have ever used SOL when I had an IPMI that did not have a remote console option. Is that your case here?

HTH

 

[trumee]

@Jeggs101 I am using the Supermicro java viewer. It is the same as using as 'ipmitool sol activate'. I tried it and both have the same output.

@vanfawx I am using gentoo with OpenRC and not systemd.

Right, the reason i have to use SOL is because remote console is not available as soon as i enable the onboard iGFX graphics option.

 

[vanfawx]

@trumee - Based on the output you're showing, it looks like agetty isn't running against the port. You're using the correct tty, since you're getting grub output during boot.

Once the machine is booted, I would comment out the agetty in your inittab and try running it by hand to see if you get a login prompt on the serial console.

Also, ensure you update /etc/securetty with ttyS1 so you can login as root on it (if that's something you do).

Anything interesting in your logs?

 

[trumee]

I dont have /etc/securetty. I guess this is not built by default on gentoo, but needs to be turned on manually.

agetty seems to be running, but there is no output in the serial console.

# /sbin/agetty -L 115200 ttyS1 vt100

In /var/log/messages i see,

Jul 11 06:50:39 tvbox agetty[6460]: /dev/ttyS1: cannot get controlling tty: Operation not permitted
Jul 11 06:50:39 tvbox agetty[6460]: /dev/ttyS1: cannot get controlling tty: Operation not permitted
Jul 11 06:50:39 tvbox agetty[6460]: /dev/ttyS1: cannot set process group: Inappropriate ioctl for device

Also,

# ls -tlr /dev/ttyS1
crw--w---- 1 root tty 4, 65 Jul 11 06:50 /dev/ttyS1

 

[StanSu]

Hi Trumee,
Have you ever check the IO address on BIOS setup, I have check X11SAT-F in my side and SOL seems implement on
0x03f8 with ttyS0.