HP ProLiant DL360 G7 Server reconfigure iLO using ipmitool

Question

I am struggling with an HP machine that has an iLO card that for some reason has gone off the radar. I can ping the card, but that's pretty much everything I can do with it. The host is running a trimmed down version of RHEL5.8, so I can't install the HP native utilities, I can use ipmitool though.

So far, I have been able to reconfigure ther card's IP address usinf ipmitool set 2 ipsrc static and the rest of the commands to configure the IP, gateway, netmask etc, and the card is now pingable. Here's what it looks like:

# ipmitool lan print 2
Set in Progress         : Set Complete
Auth Type Support       :
Auth Type Enable        : Callback :
                        : User     :
                        : Operator :
                        : Admin    :
                        : OEM      :
IP Address Source       : Static Address
IP Address              : 10.1.0.36
Subnet Mask             : 255.255.0.0
MAC Address             : 78:e7:d1:62:4e:c0
BMC ARP Control         : ARP Responses Enabled, Gratuitous ARP Disabled
Default Gateway IP      : 10.1.255.254
802.1q VLAN ID          : Disabled
802.1q VLAN Priority    : 0
Cipher Suite Priv Max   : Not Available

So I go ahead and try to configure access like so:

# ipmitool lan set 2 auth ADMIN MD5
# ipmitool lan set 2 access on
Set Channel Access for channel 2 failed: Unknown (0x83)

Has anyone experienced this before? What can I do to reset the iLO and get back to having access to it?

Thanks, /me

EDIT:

# nmap -p0 10.1.0.36

Starting Nmap 5.51 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2013-11-18 03:35 CET
Nmap scan report for host-ilo.mydomain.com (10.1.0.36)
Host is up (0.00017s latency).
PORT  STATE    SERVICE
0/tcp filtered unknown
MAC Address: 78:E7:D1:62:4E:C0 (Hewlett Packard)

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.35 seconds

Solution

And you can't browse or SSH to the ILO? What does an nmap scan show?

You only need to install the hponcfg utility for your OS to obtain the ILO's configuration and/or reset the device. It's a single RPM.

hponcfg -w filename.xml will write the device configuration to filename.xml.

hponcfg -r resets the device to factory defaults.

I'd also recommend a firmware update to your ILO and (system). A firmware update initiated from the host OS will also reset the ILO device. That's beyond the scope of this question, but many people don't keep their HP server firmware up-to-date.

---

Edit: If the ILO is in shared mode (versus using its dedicated NIC port), you won't be able to see it from the host server. Keep that in mind. Have you attempted a connection to the ILO via http or SSH from another host?

Comments

[ewwhite]

Please see my edit above...

[David Corsalini]

Well, the distribution on this host is RHEV-H, and a pretty outdated RHEV-H at that. I have been googling about and it seems like ipmitool should be enough to handle this issue, but the error gets in the way

[ewwhite]

But you can still get the hponcfg command onto an RHEV host. That's the right way to handle this.

[David Corsalini]

I've tried to install the RPM manually, moreover, I've tried to push the files it contains into the right directories, it just doesn't work. The newer RHEV hosts based on RHEL6 have a means of installing RPMs, but this is the old RHEL5 based RHEV-H, basically a stripped down liveCD image, written to the local disks and running in r/o mode. That makes it very secure, but obviously limits my options there

[ewwhite]

You can try the ESXi version or extract the RHEL5 RPM... You'll need the binary and the .so files: /sbin/hponcfg, /usr/lib/hponcfg, /usr/lib/hponcfg/libhponcfg.so

[David Corsalini]

nope, for hponcfg to work I also need the full hp-ilo package, and for that I need to have kernel-devel in place, which takes me even deeper into dependency hell on a distro with no yum or internet access.