Features/ipmiutil

= ipmiutil =

Summary
An easy-to-use fully-featured IPMI server management utility.

Owner

 * Name: Andy Cress


 * Email: arcress at users.sourceforge.net

Current status
(http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=186017)
 * Targeted release: Fedora 14
 * Last updated: 2010-07-23
 * Percentage of completion: 100%
 * Last Koji build: 186017 ipmiutil-2.6.8-1.fc14  arcress  2010-07-22 16:07:43	complete

Detailed Description
IPMIUTIL performs a series of common IPMI server management functions to allow administrators to perform management functions without a learning curve. It can gather FRU inventory data, SEL firmware log, sensors, watchdog, power control, health, monitoring, and has an SOL console. It can write sensor thresholds, FRU asset tags, and supports a full IPMI configuration save/restore. Ease-of-use examples with IPMIUTIL: configuring the IPMI LAN requires a single command, and a soft-reboot can be easily performed instead of a hard reboot. This utility can use various existing IPMI drivers, or run in driverless mode, which is useful for boot media or test environments. The decoding of IPMI events includes a severity, and any events not recognized at least return the data, rather than just Unknown. Features compared to other IPMI packages: http://ipmiutil.sourceforge.net/docs/ipmisw-compare.htm

Benefit to Fedora
This is a new project for Fedora. Previous IPMI management features in Fedora were oriented bottom-up, providing IPMI features, but requiring previous IPMI knowledge and many commands to accomplish common tasks. IPMIUTIL detects defaults rather than requiring them as input. It has an existing following of users who see its benefits over other IPMI projects.

Scope

 * Upstream Project: http://ipmiutil.sourceforge.net/
 * List of Bugs upstream: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=116222&func=browse
 * Features compared to other IPMI packages: http://ipmiutil.sourceforge.net/docs/ipmisw-compare.htm
 * Additonal automated test scripts need to be added: Completed with testipmi.sh in ipmiutil-2.6.8 cvs submission 07-22-10

How To Test
Hardware: This utility should be tested both locally and via IPMI LAN to the target. There should be more than one vendor's IPMI firmware tested, for example: Intel, SuperMicro, Dell, etc. It works with both standard servers and bladed ATCA servers.

Software: It runs with or without a driver on any IPMI-compliant server. There is an existing unit test script in the project (unittest.sh) which checks minimal functionality for each area, and a more detailed automated test script is under development (testipmi.sh). These scripts detect PASS/FAIL for each test case. The scripts can be modified if desired to add additional tests. To test remote IPMI LAN capability via testipmi.sh, the target server should first be prepared by installing ipmiutil and doing: # ipmiutil lan -e -I  -u admin -p password # service ipmiutil_asy start

User Experience
ipmiutil = the command-line utility to perform various IPMI management functions, see man pages for details.

ievents  = a standalone utility to interpret IPMI or PET events, especially useful at the enterprise management station for IPMI PET SNMP trap interpretation.

checksel = a daily cron script to manage the IPMI SEL, copying records to syslog, and clearing it if full.

ipmi_port = a service to bind RMCP port 623 to prevent portmap from using it

ipmiutil_asy = a service to listen for async bridge requests, like soft-reboot

ipmiutil_wdt = a service to reset the IPMI watchdog every 60 seconds

ipmi_sample  = a sample custom app using libipmiutil.a

Dependencies
Does not depend on any external software packages, but will use any of several ipmi drivers, if running locally and the driver is loaded.

Contingency Plan
None necessary.

Documentation

 * UserGuide http://ipmiutil.sourceforge.net/docs/UserGuide
 * Feature comparison http://ipmiutil.sourceforge.net/docs/ipmisw-compare.htm
 * List of Bugs upstream http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=116222&func=browse

Release Notes

 * Adds ipmiutil package for easy-to-use management on IPMI servers. Includes default detection of various parameters, making the provisioning and IPMI LAN remote connections much easier. Includes optional services to automate IPMI management.

Comments and Discussion

 * See Talk:Features/ipmiutil
 * or http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ipmiutil-developers