#arpnetworks 2017-01-22,Sun

mercutio

it mostly looks to be the AMI unsupportable, although the ATEN sometimes have issues
does it have OS on it?

acf_

I imagine I can find out somehow through ipmi or the web interface?
yea
oh right..

mercutio

dmidecode | grep -i product

dne

dmidecode -s baseboard-product-name

mercutio

heh dne is more specific

dne

(gleaned from the source)

acf_

X9SCD

mercutio

that works for me too
that's not on the list of working or not working

acf_

> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wVrwOpebTn43ncEBY9dfn1SMVM205NEMwy1W8q_kR3s/edit#gid=0
there are some "X9SC..." in there

mercutio

but X9SRD has some issues
true
it should be ATEN at least
i suspect it's fixable

dne

acf_: sorry for getting your hopes up

[15:06]

acf_

I'm probably just not using this novnc thing right

[15:06]

dne

hm I can't find the string "unsupported server" in the source
(or I don't know how to search properly on github)
aah "Sorry, forked repositories are not currently searchable"
yes it does exist in the source

[15:08]

acf_

oops
forgot to check out the "bmc-support" branch

[15:15]

mercutio

sweet
i'm just trying it too
where do you set username?

[15:16]

acf_

I think you type "username:password" into the password field
mine is stuck on "Connecting..." now

[15:18]

mercutio

well it says connecting
but i can't see anything happening
unsupported server
but i think it's just having trouble talking to it

[15:18]

acf_

"Failed to connect to server" here
I can telnet to [ip]:5900

[15:20]

mercutio

maybe you have to initiate remote connection first
oh so can i

[15:20]

acf_

> RFB 003.008
so the TCP connection does go through

[15:20]

mercutio

there is nothign useful under ast2100 settings
video quality and subsampling mode
but does suggest i have the right branch
maybe password is done diff

[15:21]

acf_

there is a little popup at the top of the page for a second when you click "Connect"
that says something about "user:password"
so that's where I got that rom

[15:22]

mercutio

you are right
i missed that bit hah

[15:22]

acf_

oh, here are some instructions https://basraayman.com/2016/12/03/using-a-novnc-branch-to-connect-to-your-supermicro-ikvm/

[15:23]

mercutio

i saw the left bit
weird, when i click connect it seems to only talk on port 80 not 5900
and that maybe having the other web interafce open

[15:23]

acf_

what does?

[15:25]

mercutio

i'm tcpdumping on tun09
tun0

[15:25]

acf_

I see traffic to 5900 on tun0

mercutio

when i enter my password it's like no communication seems to happen
after password?
i see it before password

acf_

ohhh

mercutio

it just says "Connecting..." normally
except it failed before
haha "HTTP: GET /cgi/ipmi.cgi?SENSOR_INFO_FOR_SYS_HEALTH.XML"
tcpdump is auto checking content it seems

acf_

oh well
my computer crashed while I was trying to install Ubuntu 14.04 in a VM..
so I guess I should go start that again
typically should I file a ticket if I need an iso image attached that isn't available in the library?

[15:28]

mercutio

yeah
if you want it added to library

[15:29]

acf_

I mean, I just need to use it for maintainance
but I think it has to be in the library for that

[15:30]

mercutio

yeah
you can attach your own iso
but to get it added to list yeah

[15:30]

acf_

the supermicro http interface indicates that the iso is loaded from a Windows share
I guess I could run a Windows share locally and try to use the iso over the VPN
but that sounds like a major PITA

[15:31]

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[15:33]

mercutio

you can't
it's a restricted network
no internet

[15:33]

acf_

yeah, but I'm connected to it over VPN, yeah?
to access the interface?

mercutio

just send an email with link to ISO you want added

acf_

so I could use a share on my VPN IP?

mercutio

oh that may work
but the last time i tried doing something like that it was extremely slow

acf_

yeah, I imagine so..

mercutio

it may be ok if you have say 20msec ping

acf_

well.. I'll try to get this stupid supermicro software working first and then worry about all that

mercutio

but with 60 msec ping it'd probably be past the point of irritation a lot :)

acf_

it's a live linux cdf
so I think it will load the whole image into RAM?

mercutio

i use arch linux as live cd

acf_

I basically just need access to the lvm2 tools

mercutio

there's otehr live ones in there i think though

acf_

and preferrably cfdisk
hmm.. ok. maybe I'll try one

mercutio

i use gdisk, arch linux would have lvm2, at lesat
and it has zsh :)

acf_

I did a dry run of this operation in a VM earlier with the Debian live CD
so I was going to try to just use the same one

mercutio

hmm i haven't checked out debian in a while
ubuntu's installer is brain dead

[15:37]

acf_

I run Debian testing on lots of stuff
yeah Ubuntu has some issues

[15:37]

mercutio

i did before shifting to ubuntu
now i do arch for personal stuff ubuntu for other stuff
but installing ubuntu with arch is nicer than usign their installer imo

[15:37]

gizmoguy

mercutio: any ideas on how to define multiple smokeping probes with different arguments?

[15:38]

mercutio

create more smokeping probes?

[15:39]

gizmoguy

but the name of the probe is the module it loads right?

[15:39]

mercutio

i don'tk now if you can change arguments per target
nope
the binary =
isn't it?
oh hmm
i dunno now :)

[15:39]

gizmoguy

nah the name tells it which module (e.g. Smokeping::probes::FPing) to load
it's really annoying me
I'll try define it per host

[15:40]

mercutio

Yeah I think you're right
hangon i think you can overload

urlformat = http://%host%/

i've got lines like that
per host i'm tracking

[15:40]

gizmoguy

can you do an if statement though

mercutio

i doubt it

gizmoguy

basically I have an expensive server to query with ICMP

mercutio

but i use that for filename

gizmoguy

and I want to do it 5 times instead of 20

mercutio

urlformat = http://%host%/ at = http://%host%/200k
of what to curlk
you should be able to change it
you may have to delete the old rrd though
or change it

gizmoguy

yeah but I want everything else to be queried 20 times

mercutio

try just setting pings = 5
under the ++

gizmoguy

on the Target?

mercutio

and host etc
yeh
the web interface will show how many it is
but you may have to remove the old rrd

gizmoguy

ERROR: /etc/smokeping/config.d/Targets, line 43: unknown variable 'pings'
:(

mercutio

gizmoguy

maybe this isn't actually possible...

mercutio

it should be

gizmoguy

Oh!
A probe can have subsections
so:
+ FPing
++ FPingGentle
pings = 5

mercutio

yeah
i did say ++
did that help?
i didn't even realise you didn't know you could do that

gizmoguy

I didn't know a Probe could have a subsection

mercutio

mine have all been using that forever

gizmoguy

I know Targets can

mercutio

i dunno why you can't just put pings = 5 in the target

[15:45]

gizmoguy

it doesn't recognise it

[15:45]

mercutio

braindead

[15:45]

gizmoguy

Which is odd, because that's how the DNS probe and Curl probes work

[15:46]

mercutio

yeah
it's only curl i've changed
by expensive do you mean it's on 3g or such?

[15:46]

gizmoguy

Nah. There's a piece of slow software that handles ICMP

[15:47]

mercutio

ahh
i want to know why this novnc doesn't work

[15:47]

gizmoguy

mmm?

mercutio

the novnc that works to supermicro servers apparently

gizmoguy

can you update the IPMI on the supermicro to a version that does HTML?

mercutio

but after putting in a password (any passwrod) it doesn't seem to communicate further

acf_

I wonder if the branch is just broken right now

gizmoguy

Or is that what you've done

mercutio

and just stays "connecting..."
acf: yaeh that's what i'm thinking

acf_

I tried reverting to a couple of commits ago

mercutio

gizmoguy: not on the old gear

acf_

but the history is probably complicated

mercutio

gizmoguy: you can use vnc to connect direclty using this git version of novnc in a separate branch

gizmoguy

haha
sounds lovely
makes me appreciate my Dell machines even more

mercutio

it's nicer than java
it works with dell too
idrac7 and idrac8

gizmoguy

On idrac8 you get VNC over WebSockets

mercutio

well that's what novnc is basically

gizmoguy

and the DRAC web interface comes with an HTML5 vnc viewer bundled

acf_

that's basically what this is

gizmoguy

it possibly is novnc
i haven't picked it apart
but it comes stock which is nice

acf_

gave up on the ubuntu installer.. trying debian jessie now

mercutio

supermicro are doing html on recent stuff too with recent firmware

[15:52]

gizmoguy

yeah some of my supermicros do HTML5
It's not as pretty as the dell stuff
but works

[15:52]

acf_

oh nice. the Arch install iso has all of the tools I need
mercutio: do you know if it does serial console automatically?

[15:56]

mercutio

nah it doesn't
you need to tell it console=ttyS0,115200
you can do another console=tty0 too

[15:56]

acf_

hmm

mercutio

also if you want to ssh into it
which you probably do

acf_

so I'll get the bootloader over the serial console?

mercutio

set your ip, passwd, then systemctl start sshd
i have actually been wondering if it's possible to fix the arch linux cd to automatically go to serial
i think with more recent archlinux it was better, i think i'm going to have to test it again
hangon
it's hp rather than supermicro, but i'll boot my home server and test

acf_

testing in a VM now

[16:00]

mercutio

hp are cool in that you can ssh into them and tell them what cd to boot
oh that's the other way of going duh

[16:00]

acf_

it at least shows the bootloader over serial

[16:01]

mercutio

<tab><space>console=ttyS0,115200<enter>
should work even if you can't get out of the gui crap
ie typing that blind in serial console

[16:05]

acf_

yeah, it seems to work
okay.. well I think I'll try this then

mercutio

cool

acf_

thanks for all the help

mercutio

all good
i know how annoying java can be :)
java works for me but it still does annoying things, liek come up on my screen that's turned off

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[16:08]

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[16:16]

acf__

having trouble getting it to boot from cdrom..
dammit
well.. serial console worked in the VM
> ISOLINUX 6.03 6.03* ETCD Copyright (C) 1994-2014 H. Peter Anvin et al
but the actual menu is only displayed on the monitor
(I can see it in the "remote console preview" image over http)

[16:17]

mercutio

mm type what i said above
@mercutio ? <tab><space>console=ttyS0,115200<enter>
oh it may be two enters

[16:23]

acf__

yeah. I tried that

mercutio

that's at the menu
it takes a while
because the cd is slow on virtual media
even on lan

acf__

I'm refreshing the preview image
it doesn't show that it's doing anything

mercutio

does it show in menu?
it usually clears the screen

acf__

it shows the menu

mercutio

has some grey text saying some loading thing
oh
maybe it needs another enter?

acf__

hmm
if I power cycle, and press only enter a bunch of times
should it at least try to boot something?

mercutio

yeah if you press enter from arch it'll boot 64 bit

acf__

this is strange because in the VM, it displayed the menu over serial

mercutio

was it the same archlinux version?
i think it improved

acf__

yeah. it was acutally a passthrough of the virtual CD

mercutio

oh
i wonder if there's a way to force that menu to behave
without remaking the iso

acf__

well my jessie vm just finished installing

[16:29]

JC_Denton

hmm
a friend is looking for a Windows-friendly VPS host.

[16:33]

mercutio

i wonder if serial port isn't ttyS0

[16:35]

acf__

I checked that it is
stupid iKVM won't work under jessie either..

[16:36]

mercutio

did it used to work?
JC_Denton: and no-one knows :)

[16:37]

acf__

I know it worked under some Debian at some point

mercutio

i think lots of people using windows tend to use vmware

acf__

with some hacking

mercutio

but kvm does work with windows

JC_Denton

yeah

mercutio

there are some hoops

JC_Denton

he's in a pickle because he wants to do Office (not 365 or the web versions) and he needs the Windows-specific stuff
he only has a Chromebook though

[16:39]

mercutio

hmm
and not enough space to just have a tiny windows box i assume

[16:39]

acf__

trying to use office on a vps sounds painful

[16:41]

mercutio

what about kvm under linux on the chromebook hah
linux worked quite well on my chromebook
oh maybe not technically inclined

[16:41]

acf__

how much ram does the chromebook have?

[16:41]

mercutio

i'm guessing 2gb

[16:42]

acf__

that's not the kind of platform I'd typically run VMs on

[16:42]

mercutio

so in the "not really pretty, but probably ok for office" category

[16:42]

acf__

tried to run Windows 10 under kvm the other day
that went terribly

[16:43]

mercutio

hmm my chromebook is 2gb, and is old and discotinued
discontinued even
acf: how much ram did you give it?

acf__

I think 3GB
it was enough I think

mercutio

should be enough

acf__

task manager didn't seem unhappy about it

mercutio

did you install the proper storage drivers

acf__

I also used virtio for all the devices

mercutio

i wish starcraft would work on linux

acf__

so yeah, loaded the virtio drivers during installation
okay new plan.. start a Windows VM on AWS
and install the shitty supermicro software on that

mercutio

i ran windows and linux on the same computer with hardware passthrough of video card for a while
one monitor with onboard video, one with video card
you really shouldn't need windows acf

JC_Denton

4 gb on the chromebook
crouton is not really feasible

[16:46]

mercutio

4gb wow
4gb should be heaps to give 2gb to windows?
when it's running

[16:46]

acf__

yeah I know.. but I've tried as much linux as I can
and none of it has worked
I would hope that it would at least work out of the box on Windows

[16:47]

what the hell
it crashes on Windows too
all I need to know is what platform this software runs on
this is completely ridiculous

[16:59]

alright.. well I installed Java on my AWS Windows VM
and added the IPMI URL to the site exception list so that it would run unsigned applets
the KVM viewer works through the web browser now

[17:06]

mercutio

maybe that's what you need on linux too

[17:11]

acf__

yeah. I guess I could try using the applet in Linux
it seems like kvm through ipmiview doesn't work at all

[17:12]

mercutio

it normally should
hmm

[17:13]

acf__

I'm using this: ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/utility/ipmiview

[17:14]

mercutio

it's not working for me hah
it has in the past
it says Cannot run program "./jre/bin/java" error=13, Permission denied

[17:14]

acf__

oh. that's a different one
I'll probably keep the disk for this Amazon VM around and just use it whenever I need to access the console
the whole thing is a piece of crap anyway

[17:15]

mercutio

wtf
it looks like fs corruption

[17:15]

acf__

fun..

[17:16]

mercutio

oh it's mixing executable access
and behaves strangely
everything was coming up ???????? etc
ipmiview includes it's own java it seems

[17:16]

acf__

yeah

[17:17]

mercutio

it's segfaulting though

acf__

ipmiview itself?
or the kvm thing?

mercutio

kvm inside ipmiview

acf__

yeah
that's what I was getting

mercutio

going to try using normal java on it

[17:19]

acf__

if you look at the log, it says it's segfaulting inside of native code
ie, JNI

[17:19]

mercutio

how do you run iKVM.jar?
i have he parmas

[17:20]

acf__

java -jar iKVM.jar
maybe?

[17:20]

mercutio

oh
i was missing the -jar

acf__

there is some "iKVM" file in there too
not sure if it's just a script to run that command or not
I didn't look

mercutio

core dump

acf__

yea

mercutio

# C [libiKVM64.so+0x19194] RFBScreen::ScreenDecode()+0x104
is that what you had?

acf__

yeah
libiKVM64.so

mercutio

exactly?

acf__

that's the native code
pretty close
I've nuked all of those VMs now
but it was crashing in that function

mercutio

ahh
wow

acf__

lemme check the Windows log

mercutio

just going to check it still works from browser :)

[17:23]

acf__

the Windows log isn't very specific
I guess it doesn't have debugging symbols in the dll
it just shows that it's crashing somewhere in iKVM32.dll

[17:24]

mercutio

hmm i got in

acf__

yeah
the browser version works

mercutio

yeah

acf__

I didn't expect that
I imagine it's pretty much the same thing

mercutio

i have a jnlp

acf__

but I definitely don't want Java installed in the normal browser that I use

mercutio

you can do it using javaws

acf__

to just launch the jnlp directly?
in fact, I don't really want this sketchy supermicro stuff anywhere on my computer
but maybe in a Linux VM :P

mercutio

heh
it does something weird to the password
it's not rot13
but it looks to be about as bad
maybe base64?

acf__

as long as you can replay it

[17:28]

mercutio

but yeah if you just get the jnlp once
you should be able to execute it later i suspect

[17:28]

acf__

yeah
I recall trying that last time I was messing with this
I can't recall if that's what ended up working

[17:28]

mercutio

it's kind of messy

[17:29]

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brycec[m]

twss

[18:47]

BryceBot

Okay! twss! 'it's kind of messy'

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up_the_irons

mercutio: mike-burns : it's a child process that has ended but not reaped by the parent

[19:33]

acf__: FYI, I use mercutio's ipmitool "sol activate" snippet all the time. I can get into BIOS, etc... usually without trouble. Boot loaders that don't output to serial, well, that can still be an issue, unfortunately.

[19:38]

mercutio

the "not outputingto serial" boot loader issue is way worse on linux than it should be

[19:39]

up_the_irons

mercutio: acf__ : indeed, we had a customer that mounted an ISO from their local machine at home to an ARP Metal box, over the VPN. I thought he was crazy but he got the whole thing installed. :)

[19:42]

nathani

up_the_irons: how come this customer didnt juet provide you with a wget URL to add the ISO to the SMB share?
s/juet/just

[19:45]

BryceBot

<nathani> up_the_irons: how come this customer didnt just provide you with a wget URL to add the ISO to the SMB share?

[19:46]

up_the_irons

gizmoguy: acf__ mercutio : that's nice that idrac8 is basically doing noVNC; i didn't know that
acf__: the Arch install ISO is what we use for all our new systems; it has everything you need. From there, debootstrap turns the box into Ubuntu for us. and it works great over serial doing what mercutio said
acf__: you were able to type blind from serial? (like, it works with input but not output?)

[19:46]

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acf__

yeah, this Arch install ISO is pretty great
when I was doing this with the Debian live CD, I had to actually install the packages for lvm2 into the live cd first

[20:16]

mercutio

it also has things like smartmontools

[20:16]

acf__

I never got it to respond to input over the serial console. it might be me doing something stupid though of course
I'll try again after this operation is complete when Ireboot

[20:16]

mercutio

maybe see if you can get into bios first
just to make sure keyboard is working

[20:17]

acf__

yeah. I got into BIOS over the serial console to change the boot order
so I know that works

[20:17]

mercutio

ahh

[20:17]

acf__

(apparently it doesn't honor the ipmi boot order setting?)

[20:18]

mercutio

i didn't know ipmi has boot order

[20:18]

acf__

maybe that's why it wasn't working :P
there was some setting in ipmitool that claimed to get it to boot from cdrom

mercutio

when mounting new cd sometimes you have to full reset
rather than reboot

acf__

> bootdev <device> [<clear-cmos=yes|no>] [<options=help,...>]
> Request the system to boot from an alternate boot device on next reboot
hmm

mercutio

hmm that sounds good
hp has something like that, which does work

acf__

I was fully powering off each time if that's what you mean

mercutio

but you still do a reset
hmm, amybe reset is better than power off
dunno

acf__

yeah idk
but changing it in the bios worked
so that was fine

mercutio

i change cd with hp with ssh normally now, rather than load up web ui

......... (idle for 42mn)

acf__

okay.. so I wait for isolinux to load
then I blindly type "<tab><space>console=ttyS0,115200<enter>"

[21:02]

mercutio

type it at the menu yeh
oh and an extra enter
cos i forgot to select the item after changing it
i think you need it twice,

[21:07]

acf__

well, I don't get a menu
the only output I get is a single line
> ISOLINUX 6.03 6.03* ETCD Copyright (C) 1994-2014 H. Peter Anvin et al
of course that works if I do it on the graphical console, but not on the serial console

[21:08]

mercutio

oh so it's not acceping serial input either
i think what's happening is that syslinux is trying to use the serial port at the same time as ipmi

[21:09]

acf__

hmm?
ipmi tries to use the serial port?

mercutio

well the menu came up fine on serial port with kvm
yeah the bios uses ipmi

acf__

I thought what happened was the serial port was just a normal serial port

mercutio

thats' why you can see the bios

acf__

and the BIOS uses it, until it transfers control away to something else