Replying on-list to an off-list email. > Are you suggesting that I run a 9pin serial port to the machine > for console admin?
That is one option, and if you can do it, it's a simple and pretty trustworthy way to do things, whereas the embedded system handling IPMI is...not great ;-) However that's not what I was suggesting here. First off, as mentioned in my earlier post; I very strongly recommend using the dedicated lan port and a private network, or at least plugged into a switch port that's on a management vlan. These devices are absolutely not suitable for being exposed to internet traffic. An aside ... Default credentials on the supermicros are ADMIN/ADMIN. On the ones I have seen recently, if you do not connect up the management network port, *BY DEFAULT THEY RUN MANAGEMENT ON THE FIRST _MAIN_ NETWORK PORT* with the well known and simple password. (I mention this specifically as some readers may think IPMI is a risk and should be ignored - wrong - in this case it is a risk and must be handled, so better to describe a bit more :-) To change the lan port, on mine, you need to connect to the controller with the java crapware and there's an option to use the dedicated lan port only. Why A) this isn't the default anyway, and B) you can't do this and change the password from the bios setup screen, is a mystery. ... so, back to serial over lan. You can redirect a serial port so instead of being routed to a physical port on the motherboard, is routed to the IPMI BMC (controller), which allows you to access it over the network. No physical serial port is used. Apart from sidestepping the laggy keyboard problem on some systems, this also lets you copy kernel messages in text form, scrollback, etc. Speaking for the X10 series (earlier ones and other vendor BIOSes will be somewhat similar) you go to "super IO configuration", "serial port 1 configuration" and set "serial port 2 attribute" [sic; consistency is not a strong point!] to "SOL". Then in "serial port console redirection" set COM2/SOL to "enabled" and go to settings, set the speed (I would use 115200), and in X10* there's a silly 100x31 console option that I disable. Make sure "redirection after POST" is at least set to "boot loader" (on X10* it's ok to use "always enable", on some other systems it must be set to boot loader only). There's also a Windows EMS option which I ignore. (doesn't apply to OP but for the benefit of anyone else reading who didn't set up the IPMI BMC, configure network on that too). The above is enough to get BIOS screens and the boot loader showing up, and you can check that in various ways. If you have a machine (Windows etc) that can fully run the java extensions, you can access SOL over the web interface or via IPMIView. If you have the standard open-source ipmitool installed you can "ipmitool -I lanplus -H % -U ADMIN -P ADMIN sol activate" (I run this from conserver to manage multi-user access and to log output in case of kernel crashes). Or you can ssh to the BMC - expect it to be slow to connect - and type "start /system1/sol1" (this command is common to most BMCs). On mine you use [cr] [esc] T to exit this mode (this sequence is likely to differ between BMCs). (I can also "start /system1/pwrmgtsvc1" and "stop /system1/pwrmgtsvc1" to turn the machine on/off - for some other vendors just "start /system1" works, or maybe something else; dig around with show / cd / help. Usually less hassle than the web interface).. When you've confirmed you can see the BIOS screens you can try the OpenBSD side - for a test just type "stty com1 115200" and "set tty com1" at the boot loader prompt, and "boot", you should see boot messages appear on the sol. You won't get a login prompt at the end yet. If that works OK you can add "stty com1 115200" and "set tty com1" to /etc/boot.conf and enable a getty (login prompt) on the port by editing /etc/ttys (change tty01 to "std.115200" and "vt220 on secure"). Since OpenBSD doesn't have dual serial+tty consoles, you won't see much on the monitor after rebooting with that in boot.conf - if you need to skip this, hold ctrl down during boot (specifically, it needs to be down at the point where the boot loader starts up), this tells the boot loader not to load boot.conf.
