Re: Dell IPMI and PERC utils

[Swift Griggs <swift.griggs%coloradovnet.com@localhost>]

On Thu, 14 Aug 2008, Michael van Elst wrote:
> Our ipmi(4) driver does something similar and feeds some of the data to 
> the envsys(4) driver, but

I noticed this in the man page:

                       This API is experimental and may be deprecated at
                       any time

Any expectation of that to change before 5.0? I suppose no matter what 
happens that envstat will come up to speed first. Incidentally, 4.0 on a 
Dell PowerEdge 2650 (pretty common "enterprise" dell server on the low 
end) gives me no love on envstat:

# envstat -l
envstat: No sensors found

I'm wondering if this has anything to do with it (from dmesg):

ioapic0 at mainbus0 apid 8 (I/O APIC)
ioapic0: pa 0xfec00000, version 11, 16 pins
ioapic0: misconfigured as apic 0
ioapic0: remapped to apic 8
ioapic1 at mainbus0 apid 9 (I/O APIC)
ioapic1: pa 0xfec01000, version 11, 16 pins
ioapic1: misconfigured as apic 0
ioapic1: remapped to apic 9
ioapic2 at mainbus0 apid 10 (I/O APIC)
ioapic2: pa 0xfec02000, version 11, 16 pins
ioapic2: misconfigured as apic 0
ioapic2: remapped to apic 10


Are those "misconfigured" lines == bad?

> [...] this looks different from say the OpenIPMI drivers in Linux where 
> you can use the same ipmitool for local and remote queries.

Ah, right, I was about to speak up that ipmitool is a Linux-only tool 
despite it's appearance in pkgsrc. Been there, done that.

> ipmi can also be used to access a redirected serial BIOS.

Weird. How does that work? Do you watch a serial port created from the 
bowels of the IPMI hardware and look for vt220? I'm thinking serial 
concentrator here ala getty + lightwave. Is that what you mean?

Also, I almost forgot to ask. The PERC 3D/I Raid controller is a re-branded 
Adaptec. It works under 4.0, but it also seems to not be recognized for 
what it is (see the "not configured" messages in the dmesg below). 
However, the controller is listed as being supported by aac(4). My real 
question is, how can I know if I lose a RAID5 disk and is it possible to 
reconstruct if I lose a RAID array member-disk? I'm guessing I have to 
watch the kernel ring buffer via a serial-console monitor or checking 
dmesg every so often, right?

Thanks,
  Swift
--
Swift Griggs -- <swift.griggs%coloradovnet.com@localhost>
Unix Systems Administrator