HP Management Base Installation and User's Guide (May 2006)

4 Troubleshooting
In the discussion that follows, all programs (and drivers) attempt to talk to the local system BMC. No RMCP
is used, no -d argument is used, and the shell environment variable EZBMC_DEVICE is unset.
Proper Function
In a properly functioning system the following should be observed:
1. No errors during installation of hpmgmtbase.
2. Three IPMI kernel modules are visible from lsmod.
3. An IPMI character device major number is visible from cat /proc/devices.
4. The character device files /dev/ipmi0 and /dev/ipmidev/0 exist with the major number seen in
the previous item.
5. hpseld is running as a daemon.
6. When run as root, hpbmc Summary runs to completion without error.
7. Any additional HP-supported programs (such as SNMP agents) run without any BMC or IPMI errors.
hpmgmtbase installation takes two major steps to determine the appropriate kernel modules. hpmgmtbase
ships with a set of binary modules compiled for the known releases from the major vendors. The installation
script examines the runtime environment and selects the correct module set.
However, if there is already a set of IPMI modules loaded from some other source (by other user actions)
then hpmgmtbase assumes these are functioning properly, will be properly reloaded at reboot, and takes
no further action (by trying to use precompiled modules).
When hpmgmtbase is started using
# /etc/init.d/hpmgmtbase start
the following actions are taken:
1. The module set designated by the install process is loaded.
2. The major number allocated to the driver is used in the creation of the following device files:
/dev/ipmi0
/dev/ipmidev/0
These are well-known names in the Open IPMI community and are the defaults for hpbmc as well as
open source programs like ipmitool.
3. The BMC SDRR is read and cached in a file. This make take over 20 seconds on certain Integrity servers,
but speeds up all subsequent operations.
4. hpseld is started
The hpmgmtbase script is linked into the appropriate /etc/rcX.d directories to insure early startup.
Improper Function
Almost all problems with hpmgmtbase are related to the version and loading of the three kernel modules
that make up the Open IPMI driver. Most specifically it is the System Interface (SI) module that causes the
problems.
SI Module NameDistributionsKernel
ipmi_kcs_drv.oRHEL 2.1, SLES 82.4 (old)
ipmi_si_drv.oRHEL 32.4 (recent)
ipmi_si.koRHEL 4, SLES 92.6
The other two modules are always named impi_msghandler and ipmi_devintf.
The SI module shipped with the distributions has been out of synchronization with HP Integrity Server Hardware
for most of its life. It is hoped that later releases will be corrected. Sometimes the SI module would not load
at all; in other cases it might load and function improperly.
Proper Function 15