IPMI on FreeBSD

Here are some notes regarding how to use IPMI on FreeBSD. This information is relevant to the Dell boxes we have at work, no guarantees otherwise.

To load the IPMI module into a running system, use

kldload ipmi

or add the following to loader.conf and reboot (if you want the changes to be persistent)

vi /boot/loader.conf
ipmi_load="YES"

shutdown -r now

The kernel log should show output similar to this

ipmi0:  on isa0
ipmi0: KCS mode found at io 0xca8 alignment 0x4 on isa
ipmi0: KCS error: ff
ipmi0: IPMI device rev. 0, firmware rev. 2.2, version 2.0
ipmi0: Number of channels 4
ipmi0: Attached watchdog

Install the ipmitool package/port. you should now be able to talk to ipmi on the local machine (or remote machines for that matter). Here are a couple of commands that I've found useful.

ipmitool lan print
Prints the current Ethernet configuration for the BMC.

ipmitool lan set
Prints the usage information for configuring the BMC LAN settings. A channel is required for setting these parameters. In my [limited] experience, the channel is always "1".

ipmitool sensor
ipmitool sdr list
Prints information about the sensors that can be monitored via ipmitool. the -v parameter added to ipmitool sensor prints the information organized in a list format.



Additional Information (sources):
FreeBSDwiki IPMI page
Linux IPMI notes (some FreeBSD info here)
Dell Linux IPMI page