Hi,
does anyone here happen to have any experience with using the IPMI 1.5 BMC
with Linux? I have a MSI K1-1000S server with Broadcom Tigon3 dual GLAN
and a MS-9549 BMC server management card. I tried to enable the IPMI
remote management functionality over the shared LAN. I've succeeded using
the ipmitools, the remote managing works quite well.
But as I did this, the ordinary network communication in Linux stopped
working. Some packets seem to flow both ways if I try to communicate, but
nothing seems to happen. If I try simple ping from inside to outside, it
does mostly nothing, from time to time I get about 2 or 3 responses in
about 10 minute period, so that means that it is not completely dead, but
somehow the packets are either mostly blocked by the BMC or worse, altered
by the BMC. (If I read the IPMI 1.5 spec correctly, the BMC should be
almost completely transparent to the remaining network packet stream.)
And when I try to access the server from outside, I get only to the BMC as
expected, but when I try for instance the ssh access, I get a "Connection
refused", though sshd is running properly.
No matter what configuration I try to set on the BMC, I cannot revert the
behaviour. Before I managed to set the BMC configuration for the first
time, everything worked as expected (without the remote server management
functionality of course). Currently the only way I managed to make the
ordinary Linux networking to work is to physically remove the BMC card
(which of course results in no sensors, no fan control, etc.).
This leads me to a question. Isn't there some extra setting that the
tg3 driver has to do to cooperate with the BMC to share the ethernet
connection? (Perhaps the driver is not ready for such a cooperation?) Or
is there some extra trick that I have to set on the BMC to make it work
correctly with the other traffic?
Any suggestions or hints are very welcome, because currently the server is
pretty much unusable. :(
Martin
On Tue, 17 Jan 2006, Martin Drab wrote:
> Hi,
>
> does anyone here happen to have any experience with using the IPMI 1.5 BMC
> with Linux? I have a MSI K1-1000S server with Broadcom Tigon3 dual GLAN
> and a MS-9549 BMC server management card. I tried to enable the IPMI
> remote management functionality over the shared LAN. I've succeeded using
> the ipmitools, the remote managing works quite well.
>
> But as I did this, the ordinary network communication in Linux stopped
> working. Some packets seem to flow both ways if I try to communicate, but
> nothing seems to happen. If I try simple ping from inside to outside, it
> does mostly nothing, from time to time I get about 2 or 3 responses in
> about 10 minute period, so that means that it is not completely dead, but
> somehow the packets are either mostly blocked by the BMC or worse, altered
> by the BMC. (If I read the IPMI 1.5 spec correctly, the BMC should be
> almost completely transparent to the remaining network packet stream.)
> And when I try to access the server from outside, I get only to the BMC as
> expected, but when I try for instance the ssh access, I get a "Connection
> refused", though sshd is running properly.
>
> No matter what configuration I try to set on the BMC, I cannot revert the
> behaviour. Before I managed to set the BMC configuration for the first
> time, everything worked as expected (without the remote server management
> functionality of course). Currently the only way I managed to make the
> ordinary Linux networking to work is to physically remove the BMC card
> (which of course results in no sensors, no fan control, etc.).
>
> This leads me to a question. Isn't there some extra setting that the
> tg3 driver has to do to cooperate with the BMC to share the ethernet
> connection? (Perhaps the driver is not ready for such a cooperation?) Or
> is there some extra trick that I have to set on the BMC to make it work
> correctly with the other traffic?
OK, I've finally seem to have found the answer. The MAC and IP address of
the BMC card HAS TO BE DIFFERENT than the one of the ordinary LAN, though
sharing the same chip, wire etc. Now it's working. :)
The text of the IPMI 1.5 standard got me thinking they need to be the same
and that the differentiation is made only by the destination port (623 for
BMC, others for OS), but that was wrong. :(
Martin