Appendix A Frequently Asked Questions

I have a custom kernel, and none of the IPMI modules work.

See Chapter 5 for instructions on rebuilding the kernel.

Can I use the Open IPMI driver directly from my own programs?

Yes. There are several open source tools that use direct access to the Open IPMI driver device interface. One of these is the Open IPMI Library, which can be found at the following Wb site:

http://www.sf.net/projects/openipmi

hpmgmtbase sets up the same default device files used by this library.

Another utility is ipmitool, which also uses those default device files.

Multiple programs can access the device files simultaneously. However, HP supports only the use of HP-supplied commands with the HP-supplied binaries.

Does Open HPI work on HP Integrity Servers?

No. The Open HPI implementation relies on few optional IPMI commands that are not currently realized on HP Integrity Servers.

Does Free IPMI work on HP Integrity servers?

Free IPMI is a user-space protocol driver that provides access to BMC hardware without a kernel module. It is targetted specifically at I/O port implementations of BMCs found on x86 architectures. HP Integrity Servers use a memory-mapped architecture that is incompatible with Free IPMI.

There are a lot of n/a lines when I run hpbmc FRUprint. What does this mean?

The IPMI FRU list is a master material list of all FRUs that could possibly be installed in your Integrity Server. It does not show only those FRUs that are currently installed. Optional FRUs that are not currently installed are listed as n/a (not available).

Can I use open source tools such as ipmitool after installing hpmgmtbase?

Yes. Most of them use the Open IPMI driver and well-known device files, which are designed for multiple concurrent access. Performance might be degraded if too many operations are attempted at once.