Re: IPMI SOL and console baud rate

["Jonathan A. Kollasch" <jakllsch%kollasch.net@localhost>]

On Thu, Feb 03, 2011 at 04:14:15PM -0600, Zack Brown wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I asked a while back about setting up IPMI Serial Over LAN on NetBSD and
> received some help on it, but I got busy with other work and am just now
> getting back to it.
> 
> Through BIOS options, I can redirect BIOS output over SOL, that's been
> working fine.  Using the advice I received previously, I used installboot to
> change the console to com1 at a speed of 115200 (consistent with the BIOS
> options of COM2 at 115200).  /etc/ttys has everything off except tty01 using
> '...getty std.115200 unknown...' and constty using '...getty (Pc or
> std.115200, doesn't seem to make a difference) vt100...'  I've also
> uncommented screen 0 in /etc/wscons.conf.
> 
> Using these settings, I see everything up to the bootloader, where I'm able
> to select different boot options as I would from a regular console (using
> consdev com1 doesn't seem to affect anything).  Once NetBSD starts booting,
> I get all of the kernel output on the computer I'm connecting from, but it
> suddenly cuts off at or a little after listing vendor products at pci0.  If
> I wait until getty starts (which I can tell by seeing if ctrl+Fn does
> anything from a keyboard/monitor connected to the server) then hard power
> off the server, a few seconds later the rest of the kernel output plus all
> of the NetBSD starting messages including the login: prompt on tty01 get
> dumped to the remote computer.  However, this does not work if I wait too
> long after getty starts - in that case nothing happens on the remote
> computer.

Interesting, almost as if some packets are getting stuck in a queue.
 
> As far as I can tell, this looks like a speed difference problem, but I
> don't know any other places to change the console baud rate.  If I'm right
> in my conclusion, is there anywhere else speed can be changed?  If not, any
> ideas what's happening?
>
> This is on a Dell PowerEdge R210 using NetBSD 5.1_RC4.
> 

I somewhat doubt it's a baud rate issue.

I'm curious, does the IPMI controller have an exclusive ethernet port?
If it doesn't, we might need to be careful about what we do with the
NIC it's using.

You might try playing with the SOL port when something else is the
console device, perhaps try upping the NICs and then trying serial.
But it's entirely possible we've reset too much of the chip by then.

Are the NICs of the wm(4) variety?  Intel has a manual that covers
some remote management capabilities that were added to the family
after wm(4) was originally written.

        Jonathan Kollasch