Ipmitool Uefi

[Midas Souza]

Nowwhen I perform nova boot, the node started in BIOS mode, While the neutron port is updated by Ironic for uefi dhcp options. Due to this, it failed to boot. Manually forced the server to boot into UEFI and then waited for deployment to finish. The server again started up in BIOS mode but failed to boot. Again manually forced the server to boot into UEFI.

A FIXME note was left in the code. It seems that ipmitool has a problem

setting the efiboot + persistent options at the same time

(see bug #1611306). It seems multiple options ought to be specified

together, and that works, except for efiboot. Therefore this patch is

using raw bytes to change the boot device when persistent and uefi are

specified, that way it will work for newer and older versions of the

ipmitool utility.

If for example as part of your baremetal automation you need to change the boot order of the machine, for example to force it to boot from network or remote ISO, you can use ipmitool to set the boot order (or just force for the next reboot a specific boot method).

After performing a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) flash on system and power cycling to activate, in rare cases the Integrated Management Module (IMM) powers off and on the system, reports Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) corruption, then switches the UEFI to the Backup Bank.

Symptom was seen during Internal IBM testing, but was not able to be reproduced to provide resolution. The primary bank is expected to be good, and reverting back to the primary bank works in the Lab.

The ipmitool utility is available in most recent Linux distributions. It is also available from sourceforge.net. A Windows version can be built using the cygwin utility, also available from sourceforge.net.

If any customer experiences the problem, please contact IBM Support and open a case with all pertinent information.

Serial over LAN (SOL) is a very powerful IPMI tool that provides serial line access over the management LAN. The typical goal of Serial over LAN is to redirect the traffic to/from a local asynchronous serial controller interface. This can be used to implement a virtual remote serial terminal that enables the user or remote software to interact with serial-based interfaces of the operating systems and management services.

Serial over LAN is available on Lenovo ThinkSystem servers in the XClarity Controller BMC with IPMI v2.0. SOL is achieved by redirecting information destined for the serial port over the LAN. With SOL console redirection, system administrators can remotely view the text-based console on their remote servers or PC from anywhere and perform any task that does not require a GUI.

This document describes how to configure and use SOL to remote control the OS Direct Console and guest OS console in VMware vSphere on Lenovo ThinkSystem servers. This document is intended for technical specialists, and IT administrators who are familiar with Serial over LAN and vSphere products.

Serial over LAN (SOL) is the name of the redirection of baseboard serial controller traffic over an IPMI session. The following figure presents an example block diagram for the purposes of illustrating the concept of SOL. The lines represent the flow of the serial port data. BMC (Baseboard Management Controller) redirects the serial traffic over LAN, then the remote server or PC can interact with BIOS or OS via IPMI LAN session.

SOL can be used to enable asynchronous serial-based OS and pre-OS communication over a connection to the BMC. SOL provides users with a method to interact with serial text interfaces at remote consoles, such as operating system command-line, serial redirected BIOS interfaces, and serial text-based application over an IPMI LAN session. A single remote console application can use SOL to simultaneously provide LAN access to IPMI platform management and serial text redirection under a unified user interface. Access privileges for SOL are managed under the same user configuration interfaces that are used for IPMI management. This simplifies the creation of configuration software, remote management applications, and cross-platform configuration utilities.

To communicate normally, it is necessary to enable Serial Port Console Redirection and ensure that the parameters of the serial port are correct. You can configure Serial Port Console Redirection in Lenovo UEFI.

After ensuring that the UEFI settings are configured, we also need to redirect the direct console in vSphere to manage vSphere remotely via SOL. SOL binding with COM 1 on ThinkSystem servers, so we need to redirect the direct console to COM1.

VMware vSphere supports setting the direct console redirection form the ESXi host Client. Different from setting via boot options, when you use the ESXi host Client to redirect the direct console to a serial port, the boot option that you set persists after subsequent reboots.

VMware vSphere supports setting the direct console redirection form the vCenter. When you use the ESXi host Client to redirect the direct console to a serial port, the boot option that you set persists after subsequent reboots just like setting from the ESXi host client does. And you can make that setting part of the host profile that persists when you reprovision the host with Auto Deploy.

After setting up console redirection in UEFI and redirecting the direct console in ESXi, the direct console of ESXi output to COM1, then redirect information destined for COM1 over to the LAN. You can use ipmitool on your PC to interact with ESXi remotely.

In addition to the serial port of the ESXi host, vSphere also supports redirecting the serial port of the guest OS to the SOL. ESXi console redirection and guest OS console redirection will conflict when used together, so use one with the other turned off.

On some platforms, ipmitool offers an alternative to usingbiosconfig to make persistent changes to the boot order. This interface canspecify which is the highest-priority category of boot device. This operation is equivalent toentering BIOS setup and moving an entire category of devices to the top of the boot list (forexample, moving all disks to boot before CD-ROMs).

The following ipmitool raw commands worklike the ipmitool chassis bootdev commands.During BIOS POST, the BIOS asks the SP for boot flags. The raw commandshave an extra bit set (the persistent bit), which causes the BIOSto reorder the boot list and save that order in CMOS. These ipmitool commands can also be issued through the host SP KeyboardController Style (KCS) interface if you have the IPMI drivers installedon a host Linux system.

The BIOS boot order changes so that PXE attempts to boot first.Sun Blade X6275 has both IB and Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, and thismoves both to the top of the boot list with the InfiniBand PXE firstfollowed by GE if IB fails over. The BIOS setup reflects the changein the boot order.

The BIOS boot order changes so that any CD/DVD attempts to bootfirst. On Sun Blade X6275 this could be a USB external CD/DVD-ROMdrive or a JavaConsole-redirected CD. The BIOS setup reflects thechange in the boot order.

The BIOS boot order changes so that any floppy or removablemedia (such as USB flash) attempts to boot first. On Sun Blade X6275this could be a USB flash drive or a JavaConsole-redirected floppy.The BIOS setup reflects the change in the boot order.

The ipmi hardware type manage nodes by using IPMI (Intelligent PlatformManagement Interface) protocol versions 2.0 or 1.5. It uses the IPMItoolutility which is an open-source command-line interface (CLI) for controllingIPMI-enabled devices.

IPMI 2.0 introduces support for encryption and allows setting which ciphersuite to use. Traditionally, ipmitool was using cipher suite 3 by default,but since SHA1 no longer complies with modern security requirement, recentversions (e.g. the one used in RHEL 8.2) are switching to suite 17.

Another possible problem is ipmitool commands taking very long (tens ofseconds or even minutes) because the BMC does not support cipher suitenegotiation. In both cases you can specify the required suite yourself, e.g.

While the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) interface is basedupon a defined standard, the Ironic community is aware of at least one vendorwhich utilizes a non-standard boot device selector. In essence, this could besomething as simple as different interpretation of the standard.

Because the BMC does not respond with any sort of error, nor do we want torisk BMC connectivity issues by explicitly querying all BMCs what vendor it maybe before every operation, the vendor can automatically be recorded in theproperties field vendor. When this is set to a value ofsupermicro, Ironic will navigate the UEFI behavior difference enablingthe UEFI to be requested with boot to disk.

The send_raw vendor passthru method is available to be invoked as aclean or deployment step should raw bytes need to be transmitted to theremote BMC in order to facilitate some sort of action or specific state.In this case, the raw bytes to be set are conveyed with a raw_bytesargument on the requested clean or deploy step.

My former days with IBM have always left me for a soft spot when it comes to hardware, and even today I still find myself looking for the older Itanium servers that were once made (and subsequently abandoned). With one of my Supermicro servers starting to have issues and an upcoming project that needs more hardware, I figured looking through eBay to see what is available and can leverage some of the components I already have would be a good idea.

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