Ipmitool: Basic installation and usage

Installation

ipmitool can typically be installed via normal OS repositories:

## For Redhat based systems
yum install ipmitool

## For Debian/Ubuntu system
apt-get install ipmitool

To use ipmitool on locally installed IPMI hardware (i.e. on the same machine ipmitool is installed on) you need to ensure a number of IPMI modules are loaded and running. The three main modules required are:

• ipmi_msghandler
• ipmi_devintf
• ipmi_si

To check these are running, enter the following command:

[root@ral1 ~]# lsmod | grep ipmi
ipmi_si                79661  0 
ipmi_devintf           44753  0 
ipmi_msghandler        73369  2 ipmi_si,ipmi_devintf

If no modules are shown, modprobe the modules listed above:

modprobe ipmi_msghandler
modprobe ipmi_devintf
modprobe ipmi_si

Usage

Ensure the ipmi service is running on the host

[root@compute-0-0 ~]# /etc/init.d/ipmi restart 
Stopping all ipmi drivers:                                 [  OK  ]
Starting ipmi drivers:                                     [  OK  ]

All IPMI modules can be accessed locally or over the network:

# To access the local ipmi module:
ipmitool [command]

# To access a ipmi module over the network
ipmitool -U ADMIN -P ADMIN -H 172.16.0.10 [command]

In the following examples, we assume we are querying the local module

Check the IP Address of the IPMI modules

[root@compute-0-0 ~]# ipmitool lan print 
...
IP Address              : 172.16.0.10