2017 01 30 update: OpenManage packages updated from v8.1 to v8.4. Removed missing dependency warning.
I have a couple of old Dell R200 with CentOS7. I wanted to add two DRAC 4/P remote management cards I buought on ebay (attention: you must also have the mixed PCI-X-PCI-E riser for this, I used SN N4489; and you have to connect the ribbon cable from the DRAC to the receptacle on the riser for it to work).
The DRAC password was changed on the cards I bought, so I had to reset them. Unfortunately this can’t be done in the embedded racadm environment (the utility screen you access via ctrl-D at startup): it’s necessary to install the Dell OpenManage components, which provide the racadm4 utility that can be run from inside the OS. At the moment I’m not interested in installing the whole OpenManage thing, I only want to temporarily install the minimum needed to reset the card.
There are various howtos for this on the net, but unfortunately for various reasons I was not lucky with them. That’s why I document what I did here.
First I installed the following packages, taken from the package “OM-SrvAdmin-Dell-Web-LX-8.4.0-2193_A00.tar.gz“:
libsmbios-2.3.1-2193.9883.el7.x86_64.rpm smbios-utils-bin-2.3.1-2193.9883.el7.x86_64.rpm srvadmin-deng-8.4.0-2193.9883.el7.x86_64.rpm srvadmin-omacs-8.4.0-2193.9883.el7.x86_64.rpm srvadmin-omilcore-8.4.0-2193.9883.el7.x86_64.rpm srvadmin-racadm4-8.4.0-2193.9883.el7.x86_64.rpm srvadmin-rac-components-8.4.0-2193.9883.el7.x86_64.rpm srvadmin-racdrsc-8.4.0-2193.9883.el7.x86_64.rpm srvadmin-racsvc-8.4.0-2193.9883.el7.x86_64.rpm
Note: you also need the pciutils and setserial packages from the standard CentOS distribution.
Now I have the racadm4 utility, but when I try to use it, I get the following error:
# racadm4 getsysinfo ERROR: Unable to communicate with RAC controller. Please make sure that a RAC controller is present in the server and appropriate software is installed.
After some searching it turns out that the card is not found because the racsvc service, which is needed to communicate with it, is not effectively running, though in theory I started it. In fact the startup scripts have some bug so you have to be in /etc/init.d in order for the service processes to be actually started:
cd /etc/init.d/ ./racsvc start
and you can check that the racsvc daemon is running:
# ps -ef|grep '[r]acsvc' root 7898 1 0 14:07 ? 00:00:00 /opt/dell/srvadmin/sbin/racsvc -d /dev/ttyS2 root 7900 7898 2 14:07 ? 00:01:32 /opt/dell/srvadmin/sbin/racsvc -d /dev/ttyS2
Now racadm4 works, and you can issue:
racadm4 racresetcfg racadm4 setniccfg -s 192.168.60.185 255.255.255.0 192.168.60.254 ... wait card reset ... racadm4 getsysinfo racadm4 getniccfg racadm4 getconfig -g cfgUserAdmin -i 1 ...
After this, I checked to be able to logon to the card via https, changed the default password and finally I could happily remove the rpms I installed before. Then I removed the orphaned files with rm -rf /opt/dell (be careful, I removed it because I don’t have other Dell packages installed).
Another thing: it is reported that Java v6 is needed for the DRAC 4/P remote console to work. Nonetheless, I was able to use it in IE11 with Java v8 upd 45 (I have both 32 and 64 bit installed) by logging in to the DRAC https interface, then manually opening the url https://x.x.x.x/cgi/vkvm . Thanks go to the comments in http://blog.tjitjing.com/index.php/2014/03/how-to-get-drac-4-console-working-in-ie11.html .
P.S. I also tried the live DVD “OMSA71-CentOS6-x86_64-LiveDVD.iso” without success.
Just for completeness, months later I also needed racadm on a R520 with iDRAC7 and CentOS6. The packages I had to install were the following. Note that the srvadmin-racadm4 pakage is still required, but you have to use the racadm tool (and not radadm4 as with DRAC4):
libsmbios
smbios-utils-bin
srvadmin-argtable2
srvadmin-deng
srvadmin-hapi
srvadmin-idrac-vmcli
srvadmin-idrac7
srvadmin-idracadm
srvadmin-idracadm7
srvadmin-isvc
srvadmin-omacs
srvadmin-omilcore
srvadmin-rac-components
srvadmin-racadm4
srvadmin-racdrsc