Safe to Disable IPMI?

[Mirfster]

Been seeing some messages on the Dell C2100/FS12-TY servers regarding the IPMI adapter. These systems have a dedicated IPMI/BMC which works fine on its own.

IPMI Adapter is set to use the dedicated NIC (100 mbs)
Messages still appear if I chose to set it as a "Shared NIC"

So in FreeNas Console, I noticed that there are messages appearing:

ipmi0: KCS: Read failed on byte 2
ipmi0: KCS error: ff

Running command: dmesg -a | grep -i ipmi

Results in:

dmesg -a | grep -i ipmi
ipmi0: <IPMI System Interface> on acpi0
ipmi0: unknown resource type
device_attach: ipmi0 attach returned 6
ipmi0: <IPMI System Interface> on isa0
ipmi0: KCS mode found at io 0xca2 alignment 0x1 on isa
ipmi0: IPMI device rev. 1, firmware rev. 1.70, version 2.0
ipmi0: Number of channels 2
ipmi0: Attached watchdog
ipmi0: KCS: Read failed on byte 2
ipmi0: KCS error: ff
ipmi0: KCS: Read failed on byte 2
ipmi0: KCS error: ff

Reading up on the IPMI section of the manual (http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_network.html#ipmi); I fail to really see any value to actually using this in the FreeNas GUI. After all, it appears to basically be asking me to enter the IPMI Password and nothing else. From there I would have to browse to the BMC/IPMI IP anyways to connect, which I could already do before.

So I guess I have two questions:

1. Am I missing something about IPMI in FreeNas that would be of better benefit than just using if natively?
2. Is there any downside to disabling IPMI?
   • Not sure if FreeNas is using this to gather system info/logging/monitoring

 

[jgreco]

"IPMI in FreeNAS" is meaningless. The IPMI subsystem is there to manage the hardware platform outside of the OS. The GUI hook and other tools inside FreeNAS are basically just there for convenience; it's a way to tweak IPMI from the installed OS.

 

[Mirfster]

Thanks for the reply.

Will first test with manually disabling IPMI (kldunload ipmi)

Then if all looks well, I may add a "tunable" for the Loader with ipmi_load="No"

 

[jgreco]

That seems workable.

 

[Mirfster]

Then if all looks well, I may add a "tunable" for the Loader with ipmi_load="No"

Hmm, just now looking back at this (was doing a Burn In, so things got lengthy) and noticed that even though I put this in as a "Tuneable" I am still seeing the messages.

As well, running "kldstat" still shows "ipmi.ko" is loaded. Is there somewhere else I should be looking at to disable it? Not really sure I want to go manually modifying files outside of the GUI...

 

[rsquared]

Have you rebooted since you set that? It will only take effect at boot. Also, you typically see those parameters in all caps. I'm not sure if it's case sensitive or not off the top of my head, but if it is, "No" won't work...

 

[Mirfster]

Yeah, the "NO" is in all caps and reboot was performed:

kldstat still shows it listed:

dmesg result:

 

[Mirfster]

Will try with a lowercase "no" and see if that helps...

Edit, just tried (with a reboot) and ipmi is still there. Guess I need to figure out about the correcting the KCS error... :(

 

[jgreco]

It's very possible that the module is manually loaded. And indeed it is. Check out /etc/rc.conf

 

[Mirfster]

Wonder if that file gets re-created?

I edited it and changed

kld_list="dtraceall ipmi if_cxgbe" to be kld_list="dtraceall if_cxgbe"

Saved (WriteOut with nano), Exited, Re-Opened (just to verify changes were saved); then rebooted. IPMI was there after reboot and file looks to have been re-created and my modifications gone.

Will forget trying to disable IPMI for now and perhaps just focus on troubleshooting the "KCS errors". Saw another thread where someone was asking about this too. So if I figure it out it will help them and allow me to leverage "ipmitool" in FreeNas.

Edit: P.S. so I used nano instead of vi... I am new to this afterall.. :)