HP Management Base Installation and User's Guide

Transcription

1 HP Management Base Installation and User's Guide * * HP Part Number: Published: May 2006 Edition: 1

2 Copyright 2006 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. Confidential computer software. Valid license from HP required for possession, use or copying. Consistent with FAR and , Commercial Computer Software, Computer Software Documentation, and Technical Data for Commercial Items are licensed to the U.S. Government under vendor's standard commercial license. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. Intel, Pentium, Intel Inside, and the Intel Inside logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Itanium is a trademark or registered trademark of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. RED HAT READY Logo and RED HAT CERTIFIED PARTNER Logo are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. Microsoft, Windows, and Windows NT are U.S. registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Adobe and Acrobat are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated. SUSE and SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server are registered trademarks of Novell.

3 Table of Contents About This Document...5 Intended Audience...5 Document Organization...5 Typographic Conventions...5 Related Information...5 Updates...5 Publishing History...6 HP Encourages Your Comments Overview of hpmgmtbase...7 Conceptual Overview Installing hpmgmtbase...9 Installation Prerequisites...9 Installing the hpmgmtbase Software Using hpmgmtbase...11 hpmgmtbase Utilities...11 hpuid hp Unique Identifer (UID) utility...11 hpseld HP System Event Log (SEL) Daemon...11 hpbmc Manage the IPMI BMC on HP Integrity Servers...11 Decoding Events Troubleshooting...15 Proper Function...15 Improper Function Rebuilding the Kernel...17 A Frequently Asked Questions...19 Glossary...21 Index...23 Table of Contents 3

4 4

5 About This Document This document provides installation and user information for the HP Management Base (hpmgmtbase). Intended Audience This document is intended for Linux system administrators and assumes that the user has experience installing and managing Linux systems. This document is intended to be used in conjunction with the operations and maintenance guides for any Integrity servers on which hpmgmtbase is installed. Document Organization This document is organized as follows: Chapter 1 Provides an overview of hpmgmtbase. Chapter 2 Describes installation procedures and prerequisites. Chapter 3 Describes the command-line utilities. Chapter 4 Describes troubleshooting procedures. Chapter 5 Describes how to rebuild the kernel. Appendix A Addresses frequently asked questions related to hpmgmtbase. Glossary Glossary of important terms and concepts. Typographic Conventions This document uses the following typographical conventions: %, $, or # A percent sign represents the C shell system prompt. A dollar sign represents the system prompt for the Bourne, Korn, and POSIX shells. A number sign represents the superuser prompt. audit(5) A manpage. The manpage name is audit, and it is located in Section 5. Command A command name or qualified command phrase. Computer output Text displayed by the computer. ENVIRONMENT VARIABLE The name of an environment variable, for example, PATH. [ERROR NAME] The name of an error, usually returned in the errno variable. User input Commands and other text that you type. Variable The name of a placeholder in a command, function, or other syntax display that you replace with an actual value. NOTE A note contains additional information to emphasize or supplement important points of the main text. Related Information Updates Refer to IPMI specification at: This section describes where you can obtain updates to hpmgmtbase and related software. Software Updates For the latest updates to the hpmgmtbase software, please see one of the following Web sites: Intended Audience 5

6 Documentation Updates For the latest updates to the hpmgmtbase documentation, please see one of the following Web sites: Publishing History The document printing date and part number indicate the document s current edition. The printing date will change when a new edition is printed. Minor changes may be made at reprint without changing the printing date. The document part number will change when extensive changes are made. Document updates may be issued between editions to correct errors or document product changes. To ensure that you receive the updated or new editions, you should subscribe to the appropriate product support service. See your HP sales representative for details. You can find the latest version of this document on line at: Manufacturing Part Number Supported Operating Systems Supported Versions Edition Number Publication Date SUSE LINUX (SLES) Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) SLES8, SLES9 RHEL3, RHEL4 1 May 2006 HP Encourages Your Comments HP encourages your comments concerning this document. We are committed to providing documentation that meets your needs. Send any errors found, suggestions for improvement, or compliments to: feedback@fc.hp.com Include the document title, manufacturing part number, and any comment, error found, or suggestion for improvement you have concerning this document. 6 About This Document

7 1 Overview of hpmgmtbase HP Management Base (hpmgmtbase) is a collection of software that includes driver modules, daemons, shared libraries, lookup files, and utility support for other HP manageability software (such as SNMP Agents or WBEM providers). All HP Integrity servers provide their platform manageability information via hardware that realizes the Intelligent Platform Management Initiative (IPMI) specification. A key component of IPMI is the Baseboard Management Controller (BMC). Access to the BMC under Linux access is granted by the Open IPMI device driver. The Open IPMI device driver started as an independent project and was accepted into the formal Linux kernel as of and 2.6. During its development, this driver has not taken full advantage of the capabilities of HP Integrity platforms. Some problems do exist with older commercial Linux distributions: The driver is not included at all. The driver is included but does not work across the entire Integrity line. HP provides hpmgmtbase to ship a driver with appropriate patches that works on all supported commercial Linux distributions for all Integrity servers. Other utilities and support files comprise the remainder of hpmgmtbase. Conceptual Overview Because there is no assurance of a kernel build environment being present on any given target system, the Open IPMI driver is shipped as compiled binaries. The source code is also included for GPL compliance. The hpmgmtbase installation matches the correct binary to the running kernel. If none match, warnings are printed and the system administrator will have to build binaries per the provided instructions. hpmgmtbase can be reconfigured to use customer-generated modules. hpmgmtbase includes the following: A set of binary drivers for multiple revisions of multiple distributions Source code to those patched drivers for GPL compliance Startup scripts (/etc/init.d/hpmgmtbase and helpers) to configure and load the correct driver and set up device file hpbmc, a general-purpose tool to access the information maintained by the BMC. This includes Chassis identity (model number, serial number, and so on) Sensor Data Record Repository (SDRR, defined in IPMI), the material list of the BMC System Event Log (SEL, defined in IPMI), where the BMC stores low-level chassis events (sensor conditions, firmware events) Forward Progress Log (FPL, an HP extension) where the BMC stores informational events (similar to the POST log in x86 platforms) Current sensor readings CPU, DIMM, and PCI slot population Cell and partition assignments (midrange and high-end systems only) MP card information (IP address) hpuid (named after a similar utility on Compaq Proliant hardware) a utility that controls the Locator LED on a system. hpseld a utility to monitor the SEL for overflow and other critical events. Shared libraries and lookup tables to support these tools and other HP products (such as SNMP agents and WBEM providers) Conceptual Overview 7

8 8

9 2 Installing hpmgmtbase This chapter describes the installation procedures for hpmgtbase. Installation Prerequisites A typical server installation usually includes these items needed by hpmgmtbase will not install without these items. An officially supported version, update, or errata kernel for RedHat Advanced Server 2.1 RedHat Enterprise Linux Advanced Server (AS) 3.0 RedHat Enterprise Linux Advanced Server (AS) 4.0 SuSE LINUX Enterprise Server 8.0 SuSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9.0 RedHat AS 2.1 and SLES 8 are only supported on the following legacy entry-level Integrity servers: rx2600 and rx6000 rx5670 rpm, the RPM package manager bash, along with many common shell utilities, including the following: awk cut grep ls insmod/modprobe/depmod/rmmod from the modutils package objcopy and objdump from the binutils package Installing the hpmgmtbase Software Follow these steps to install hpmgmtbase: 1. Obtain the latest hpmgmtbase for your core distribution. There is one provided for each major vendor release. For example, hpmgmtbase1.8-1.rhel3.ia64.rpm is the 1.8 version of hpmgmtbase compiled for Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 3 and all updates. 2. As root, run the following command: # rpm -Uvh hpmgmtbase-xxxxx.ia64.rpm where xxxxx is the Linux distribution version. The installation will take approximately 30 seconds as the contents of the SDRR are read and cached for future use. 3. Run the hpbmc command with no arguments. If the installation encounters no errors, you should see a summary of your platform (model name, serial numbers, firmware revisions, IP addresses). If errors occur, see Chapter 4. Installation Prerequisites 9

10 10

11 3 Using hpmgmtbase This chapter describes how to use the hpmgmtbase utilities. All utilities have manpages. hpmgmtbase Utilities The following command-line utilities are part of hpmgmtbase. hpuid hp Unique Identifer (UID) utility Syntax /sbin/hpuid [-d] [-e] [-s] [-v] The Unique Identifier (UID) is a flashing LED on the chassis used to identify a box. This can be a great aid when confronted with a server farm of hundreds of boxes. On entry-level systems the UID is a blue LED that is present on both front and rear panels. The LED is also a pushbutton which will toggle the state of the LED. The current state of the UID can be read or changed with the hpuid command. On midrange and high-end systems (cellular/partitioned platforms) there is no pushbutton. The UID is not a single LED but a collection of all LEDs for the components of the running partition. Thus if there was a partition that consisted of one cell in cabinet 0, one cell in cabinet one, and one I/O chassis in cabinet 8, the UID consists of the following: The three large digits on the cabinet doors The Attention LED of each cell board The Attention LED of the I/O chassis (actually on the Bay panel). hpseld HP System Event Log (SEL) Daemon Syntax hpseld [-p pollinterval] The SEL daemon is started by the /etc/init.d/hpmgmtbase script during normal boot operation and should not be run manually. hpseld manages several features related to chassis events. 1. When the SEL is full, no further events can be written. hpseld monitors the capacity, clearing the SEL when necessary. This operation is much more complicated in a cellular complex where every partition shares the same SEL. 2. Pulses the IPMI watchdog timer, which shows up as heartbeat activity on the MP VFP (Virtual Front Panel) for midrange and high-end systems. hpbmc Manage the IPMI BMC on HP Integrity Servers Syntax hpbmc [-d path] [-b busaddr] [command [ data ]] hpbmc is a general purpose utility that gives complete access to the BMC. Its primary command argument is one of a list of directives that expose a particular feature of the BMC (for example, SELprint lists the current contents of the System Event Log). There are open source tools available that have similar functionality, such as ipmitool (found at and shipped with some commercial distributions). hpbmc exceeds those tools by handling the OEM IPMI extensions of HP Integrity Servers. hpmgmtbase Utilities 11

12 Refer to hpbmc(8) for an explanation of all directives. This section discusses some of the background processing done by hpmgmtbase and hpbmc. All IPMI commands are a command/response message protocol with a requestor and a responder. In most cases on HP hardware using HP software, programs running under Linux are the requestor, and the system's BMC is the responder. The BMC hardware is exposed through a System Interface as described in the IPMI specification. This channel requires a device driver and device file to exchange commands and responses. The hpmgmtbase installation will load the Open IPMI driver modules and set up the character device files /dev/ipmi/0 and /dev/ipmi0. These files are well-known to the Linux Open IPMI community (such as ipmitool). By default, hpbmc uses these files to access the local BMC. SELprint is implemented similar the following conversation: hpbmc Send "Get BMC Capabilities" Send "Get SEL Capabilities" While more SEL entries Send "Get SEL entry nnnn" Decode and print entry nnnn BMC Respond "there is an SDR, a SEL,..." Respond "there are xxxx entries" Respond with entry nnnn Another task done at hpmgmtbase installation is caching of the Sensor Data Record Repository (SDRR). IPMI is intended to be self-describing and the SDRR holds the material list for the system (along with sensors). Software can construct a coherent view of the entire system starting from this material list. The SDRR is thus crucial to the completion of most hpbmc directives. Not only is the SDRR a large list, the IPMI interface is a relatively slow channel. It can take over twenty seconds to read the SDRR on some Integrity servers. Fortunately the SDRR is a static collection on Integrity Servers and can easily be cached to a disk file. This is done at hpmgmtbase installation and by default hpbmc will read this cache. The -d path option changes the path to the BMC. The HPBMC_DEVICE environment variable can be set for the same purpose. Specifying an alternate Open IPMI device file is of interest only to IPMI utility developers and is usually not seen in practice. hpmgmtbase utilities also support the Remote Management Control Protocol (RMCP), or IPMI over LAN. This works against any BMC (or IPMI controller) which speaks RMCP. An RMCP exchange always needs a host target (DNS name or IP address), and optionally a password and user name. The path argument then takes the form [[user:]password]@hostname Either use the -d option or set HPBMC_DEVICE. Here are some things to remember: Early entry-level Integrity Servers may not have an MP card. Early entry-level MP card firmware does not support RMCP. The MP firmware must be upgraded to at least E for RMCP support. The MP card is then known as the Integrity ilo Card as it is similar in functionality to the HP ProLiant ilo cards. On entry-level Integrity ilo, RMCP access is turned OFF by default. It is enabled through the command line interface of the MP card using the SA command. The IPMI password on all HP Integrity Servers is unset (or null) by default. On midrange and highend systems the RMCP password can be set through the MP card command line interface. Entry-level systems only support RMCP password changes over RMCP; see the RMCPpasswd directive of hpbmc. The final complexity in addressing an IPMI responder or target device is the IPMI Bus, or IPMB. IPMB is an address-based I2C bus that passes IPMI commands back and forth between intelligent controllers. Some HP Integrity Servers do have IPMB, but its use is hidden by hpbmc and not directly exposed. However, on the HP ATCA platform this functionality is of immense interest. Consult ATCA documentation for details. The IPMI Send Message command is used to bridge data from external sources (System Interface or RMCP) to and from an IPMB behind the BMC. The -b argument to hpbmc takes a hexadecimal IPMB address to 12 Using hpmgmtbase

13 specify the target. For example, to issue Get Device ID command to IPMB address 0x82 behind an RMCP responder at atca.fc.hp.com with password please, the syntax is # hpbmc -d please@atca.fc.hp.com -b 82 IPMIraw 18 1 Decoding Events hpmgmtbase libraries and utilities generate extensive decoding of System Event Log (SEL) entries. HP Integrity Servers support several event types in the SEL. The first is type 02 events which are mostly documented and described in the IPMI specification. It is possible to synthesize a complete textual description of any type 02 event by successively decoding the bitfields and looking at various tables in the IPMI specification. These tables and resolution algorithms are coded into libezbmc and thus accessible to hpbmc. Type 02 events have an OEM extension subclass which are used for some events. hpbmc decodes those events as well (obviously a feature not found in the any open source tools). For various historical and technical reasons, the coverage of type 02 events is insufficient for the entire Integrity Server line. This is especially true across multiple operating systems and the cellular platforms. Integrity servers also generate full OEM events; for that HP has chosen type E0 and E1 events. These events consume two SEL entries, one for the primary data set and the second for a timestamp. Internally HP maintains an event database that contains all these events along with additional information about each event: Platforms on which the event can be generated Severity Summary/Description/Cause/Action text (ranging from a few words to entire paragraphs) SNMP trap OID or WBEM indication to be sent on event occurence Trend analysis limits This database tends to grow over time as new platforms are added to the server families. A static snapshot of this database called the event dictionary ships with hpmgmtbase and is crucial to the decoding and handling of all events. This snapshot is updated with each release of hpmgmtbase. There are several hpbmc directives concerned with event decoding. The first is SELprint which gives the decoded text for all contents of the SEL. Similar to that is FPLprint. HP Integrity Servers have a custom log called the Forward Progress Log, or FPL. This is where all status and transactions are logged, along with errors and mroe serious events found only in the SEL. The FPL can be considered a superset of the SEL. The FPL is not part of the IPMI specification. SELprintraw and FPLprintraw print the same decoded event data along with the actual bytes of the SEL entry. Another useful directive is SELdecode. The MP/iLO cards of Integrity Servers and some EFI utilities report a SEL event in its raw 16-byte form as two large 8-byte numbers. SELdecode takes those numbers as input arguments and provides a textual decode. The final event directive is EventLookup, used to generate decodes for partial event information. Entry-level servers (non- cellular) type 02 events can be categorized by an event triplet, three of the key bytes from a SEL entry. These triplets are described in the Operations and Maintenance Guide of each server. This triplet can be used as input for EventLookup. Finally, the entire event dictionary can be dumped with either EventLookup LIST (a very verbose form) or EventLookup TABLE ( -separated fields suitable for further parsing or import into a spreadsheet). Syntax 13

14 14

15 4 Troubleshooting In the discussion that follows, all programs (and drivers) attempt to talk to the local system BMC. No RMCP is used, no -d argument is used, and the shell environment variable EZBMC_DEVICE is unset. Proper Function In a properly functioning system the following should be observed: 1. No errors during installation of hpmgmtbase. 2. Three IPMI kernel modules are visible from lsmod. 3. An IPMI character device major number is visible from cat /proc/devices. 4. The character device files /dev/ipmi0 and /dev/ipmidev/0 exist with the major number seen in the previous item. 5. hpseld is running as a daemon. 6. When run as root, hpbmc Summary runs to completion without error. 7. Any additional HP-supported programs (such as SNMP agents) run without any BMC or IPMI errors. hpmgmtbase installation takes two major steps to determine the appropriate kernel modules. hpmgmtbase ships with a set of binary modules compiled for the known releases from the major vendors. The installation script examines the runtime environment and selects the correct module set. However, if there is already a set of IPMI modules loaded from some other source (by other user actions) then hpmgmtbase assumes these are functioning properly, will be properly reloaded at reboot, and takes no further action (by trying to use precompiled modules). When hpmgmtbase is started using # /etc/init.d/hpmgmtbase start the following actions are taken: 1. The module set designated by the install process is loaded. 2. The major number allocated to the driver is used in the creation of the following device files: /dev/ipmi0 /dev/ipmidev/0 These are well-known names in the Open IPMI community and are the defaults for hpbmc as well as open source programs like ipmitool. 3. The BMC SDRR is read and cached in a file. This make take over 20 seconds on certain Integrity servers, but speeds up all subsequent operations. 4. hpseld is started Improper Function The hpmgmtbase script is linked into the appropriate /etc/rcx.d directories to insure early startup. Almost all problems with hpmgmtbase are related to the version and loading of the three kernel modules that make up the Open IPMI driver. Most specifically it is the System Interface (SI) module that causes the problems. Kernel 2.4 (old) 2.4 (recent) 2.6 Distributions RHEL 2.1, SLES 8 RHEL 3 RHEL 4, SLES 9 SI Module Name ipmi_kcs_drv.o ipmi_si_drv.o ipmi_si.ko The other two modules are always named impi_msghandler and ipmi_devintf. The SI module shipped with the distributions has been out of synchronization with HP Integrity Server Hardware for most of its life. It is hoped that later releases will be corrected. Sometimes the SI module would not load at all; in other cases it might load and function improperly. Proper Function 15

16 Sometimes other user or system actions cause the distribution's drivers to be loaded before hpmgmtbase is installed, and hindsight shows that was a mistake. Follow the following steps: 1. /etc/init.d/hpima stop # If SNMP agents are installed /etc/init.d/hpwebm stop # If SNMP agents are installed /etc/init.d/hpmgmtbase stop to stop any HP IPMI programs that might be running. 2. /etc/init.d/hpmgmtbase unconfigure erases current knowledge of appropriate IPMI drivers. 3. lsmod grep ipmi To show any IPMI driver modules that may have been loaded before hpmgmtbase was originally installed. 4. For each of the modules listed above, rmmod ipmi_msghandler must be last. This removes any offending IPMI modules. 5. /etc/init.d/hpmgmtbase configure To probe and select appropriate IPMI modules. If this step returns with messages indicating you must rebuild your IPMI driver, refer to that section of this document. 6. /etc/init.d/hpmgmtbase start To cache the SDRR and start hpseld. Wait 30 seconds, then verify that hpseld is running. If that works, then you must disable whatever mechanism was loading the offending IPMI modules. 16 Troubleshooting

17 5 Rebuilding the Kernel The hpmgmtbase scripts examine the running kernel version to assist in the selection of the appropriate binaries for the HP-supplied Open IPMI modules. If the kernel (version) is changed that selection process will probably need to be executed again. This may not be apparent until a reboot of the new kernel when hpmgmtbase fails to initialize, or other programs that are dependent on the Open IPMI driver fail to start. A careful examination of boot time logs can help isolate this behavior. This version change can happen because of a planned, supported kernel upgrade (such as an errata from RedHat) or user-initiated patching and rebuild. Once the new kernel is installed, hpmgmtbase can be reconfigured to recognize the new version: 1. Shut down any other products and programs that rely on Open IPMI (such as the HP Insight Manager SNMP agents). 2. Type the following: /etc/init.d/hpmgmtbase stop 3. Type the following: /etc/init.d/hpmgmtbase reconfigure 4. Type the following: /etc/init.d/hpmgmtbase start After a short time (up to 30 seconds) hpseld should be running and hpbmc Summary should work (as outlined in the Chapter 4. If this fails, then the changes made to the kernel may require a complete rebuild of the IPMI modules. Remember that the source modules shipped with your distribution may not actually work on the particular model of HP Integrity Server. HP does not expect the source to be synchronized until RedHat Enterprise Linux 4.4 or SLES 10. To fulfill GPL requirements, hpmgmtbase includes the HP-modified source in /opt/hp/hpmgmtbase/openipmi/src. These are not patches but full source files for each of the source components. To incorporate them into your new kernel the source files must be fully copied into your kernel source tree: 1. Copy the appropriate source files from /opt/hp/hpmgmtbase/src to../drivers/char/ipmi in your kernel source tree. For any 2.6 kernel, use the source files under kernel 2.6. For a 2.4 kernel and RedHat Enterprise Linux 3: Use the source files under kernel2.4/k22. RedHat backported some of the kernel source into their kernel, even though it identifies itself as base. For other kernels, use the source files under kernel2.4/k Rebuild and install your modules in the fashion appropriate for your kernel major/minor release (2.4 is slightly different than 2.6) 3. Implement a mechanism that loads your newly compiled modules at boot time (an /etc/init.d/rcx.d script) that runs before the hpmgmtbase scripts. 4. Type modprobe ipmi_si (2.6 kernel); or modprobe ipmi_si_drv or ipmi_kcs_drv. 5. Type modprobe ipmi_devintf (all kernels). 6. Type /etc/init.d/hpmgmtbase reconfigure. The reconfiguration should recognize that modules are loaded from some other source and ignore any HP-supplied binaries. 17

18 18

19 A Frequently Asked Questions This section addresses frequently asked questions concerning hpmgmtbase. 1. I have a custom kernel, and none of the IPMI modules work. See Chapter Can I use the Open IPMI driver directly from my own programs? Yes. There are several open source tools that use direct access to the Open IPMI driver device interface. One of these is the Open IPMI Library, which can be found at hpmgmtbase sets up the same default devices files used by this library. Another utility is ipmitool which also uses those default device files. Multiple programs can access the device files simultaneously. While HP expects that to be reasonable activity, HP does not support the use of any but HP-supplied commands with the HP-supplied binaries. 3. Does Open HPI work on HP Integrity Servers? No. The Open HPI implementation relies on few optional IPMI commands that are not currently realized on HP Integrity Servers. 4. What about Free IPMI? Free IPMI is a user-space protocol driver that gives access to BMC hardware without a kernel module. It is targetted specifically at I/O port implementations of BMCs found on x86 architectures. HP Integrity Servers use a memory-mapped architecture that is incompatible with Free IPMI. 5. There are a lot of "n/a" lines when I run hpbmc FRUprint. What does this mean? The IPMI FRU list is a master material list of all FRUs that could possibly be installed in your Integrity Server. It does not show only those FRUs which are currently installed. Optional FRUs that are not currently installed are listed as "n/a" (not available). 6. Can I use open source tools such as ipmitool after installing hpmgmtbase? Yes. Most of them use the Open IPMI driver and well-known device files which are designed for multiple concurrent access. Performance may be degraded if too many operations are attempted at once. 19

20 20

21 Glossary BMC BT FPL FRU ilo IPMB IPMI KCS MP Management Processor Open IPMI RMCP Baseboard Management Controller. The IPMI spec describes the BMC as the "heart of IPMI". It is an embedded microcontroller surrounded by memory, interfaces, and sensors. The entire collection can provide the various functions described in the specification. Block Transfer. One of the System Interfaces used to connect a BMC to a system CPU. BT is used in HP Integrity midrange and highend systems. It transfers data in blocks and is much faster than KCS or SMIC. Forward Progress Log. An HP Integrity extension to IPMI, modelled on the SEL. It is a more verbose log of system activity that covers informational items, as well as everything that goes into the SEL. It is a circular log and never needs to be cleared. Field Replaceable Unit. Recognized as an industry-standard acronym, FRU is also tightly defined under IPMI specifications for data exchange. It describes any item or assembly that can be replaced outside of the factory. It may or may not require an HP-certified technician to do the replacement Integrated Lights Out. The product name for the management processor found on HP ProLiant servers. Recent firmware upgrades Integrity server legacy MP cards to Integrity ilo cards; it is this firmware that supplies RMCP. Intelligent Platform Managment Bus. An I2C serial link between two intelligent IPMI controllers such as a BMC and an MP card. While this does exist in some Integrity servers, the implementation is hidden by hpbmc. Intelligent Platform Management Initiative. A specification owned by Intel to describe mechanisms and devices to completely offload the task of managing system hardware from the primary CPU. This includes inventory management, entity relationships, sensor values, scanning and event management, inter-device and inter-chassis communication, and more. See Keyboard Controller Style. One of the System Interfaces used to connect a BMC to a system CPU. It is based on the protocol of the legacy Intel 805x keyboard controller chips (hence the name). It has a low-pin count which makes it simple and inexpensive, but its per-byte handshaking scheme makes it slow. KCS is used with the BMCs on HP Integrity entry-level servers. Management Processor. Generic term for processing, storage, sensor, and offline/remote access resources. This usually exists as separate cards or coprocessors. Early entry-level systems ship with an optional MP card, and all midrange and highend systems always have an MP card. Current firmware upgrades the functionality to Integrity ilo cards as they now are on par with HP ProLiant servers. Open IPMI refers to an open-source project whose details can be seen at It was started independently of the Linux kernel effort to bring IPMI to Linux. Since and 2.6, the Open IPMI driver has been fully integrated into the linux kernel at The Open IPMI driver consists of three modules that present a stack. The middle layer, ipmi_msghandler, keeps track of multiple messages from multiple users and devices. The upper layer, ipmi_devintf, presents a character device file for user programs to use via ioctl. The bottom layer, ipmi_si, presents plugs the message handler into the three system interfaces (BT, KCS, or SMIC) of the system BMC. Historically the Open IPMI modules have been slightly out of sync with HP Integrity server BMC hardware. hpmgmtbase was initially released to provide compatible drivers, and now includes other utilities. Open IPMI is not needed for RMCP operations. The Open IMPI project also delivers a user library which is not used by any HP products. HP supplies its own proprietary library as part of hpmgmtbase. Remote Management Control Protocol. A network IP-based protocol that provides authentication, access, and session management for management utilities. It can carry embedded IPMI commands and responses between network entities. 21

22 SDRR SEL SMIC SNMP WBEM Sensor Data Record Repository. A required feature of a BMC, this is the material list for IPMI. It starts with the list of sensors, their conversion and units, thresholds, and scanning information. The SDRR also holds FRU lists, entity associations, and HP proprietary entries. The SDRR completely describes the resources of an HP Integrity Server. System Event Log. A required feature of a BMC, this non-volatile log holds detected events that are important or critical to system operation and may be very useful in post-mortem crash analysis. It is an append-log, and when full will accept no new events. The hpseld program monitors the capacity, maintains a disk copy, and clears the log when necessary. Server Management Interface Chip. One of the System Interfaces used to connect a BMC to a system CPU. This is a generic design best utilized when the BMC appears as a PCI device. SMIC is not used on HP Integrity Servers. Simple Network Management Protocol. Methods, data structures, and protocols defined in RFC1155, 1156, and 1157 (earliest references) for data access and control of systems over a network. SNMP development began in the early 1980s; today it is both a ubiquitous standard, but also suffers from design hindsight in security and data complexity. hpmgmtbase does not directly perform any SNMP operations but its libraries are used by products that do, such as the Systems Insight Manager SNMP Agents for HP Integrity Servers. Web-Based Enterprise Management. (pronounced (web-em). Methods, data structures, and protocols defined by the DMTF ( for data access and control of systems over a network. WBEM development began in the late 1990s, and is rich in object-oriented techniques and secure access. Its acceptance is gaining at the time of writing (2006). While it will probably never replace SNMP, it will supplant it in newer systems and designs. hpmgmtbase does not directly perform any WBEM operations but its libraries are used by products that do, such Systems Insight Manager WBEM Providers for HP Integrity Servers. 22 Glossary

23 Index B Baseboard Management Controller (see BMC) BMC, 7 System Event Log (see SEL) T Troubleshooting, 15 C Cell assignment monitored by hpbmc, 7 E events decoding, 13 F Forward Progress Log (see FPL) FPL, 7 Frequently asked questions, 19 H hpbmc, 11 hpmgmtbase components, 7 installing, 9 overview, 7 using, 11 utilities, 11 hpseld, 7, 11 hpuid, 11 I Installation prerequisites, 9 procedures, 9 K kernel rebuilding, 17 L Log event, 7 forward progress, 7 P Partition assignment monitored by hpbmc, 7 R Remote Management Control Protocol (see RMCP) RMCP, 12 S SDRR, 7, 12 SEL, 7 Sensor Data Record Repository (see SDRR) Startup scripts, 7 23