IPMI and CentOS with the N36L

James Young · December 24, 2012

Over this weekend I’ve been setting up Nagios on my Microserver.  Specifically, I want to have alerting when/if the Microserver reaches critical conditions such as RAID device failure, over temperature, on UPS, stuff like that.

For monitoring temperatures and fan speed, I want to use IPMI since I have the Remote Access Card fitted.  However, IPMI doesn’t ‘just work’ out of the box.  This post will explain how to make it work.

echo modprobe ipmi_devintf >>/etc/sysconfig/modules/ipmi.modules
 echo modprobe ipmi_si>>/etc/sysconfig/modules/ipmi.modules
 echo options ipmi_si type=kcs ports=0xca2 >> /etc/modprobe.d/ipmi_si.conf
 yum install -y freeipmi
 modprobe ipmi_devintf
 modprobe ipmi_si
 ipmi-sensors

Assuming that all worked, you should see the output of your Microserver’s IPMI data, which should look something like this;

7936: Watchdog (Watchdog 2): [OK]
 22599: CPU_THEMAL (Temperature): 42.00 C (NA/110.00): [OK]
 22619: NB_THERMAL (Temperature): 41.00 C (NA/105.00): [OK]
 22593: SEL Rate (Other Fru): 6.00 msgs (NA/90.00): [OK]
 22620: AMBIENT_THERMAL (Temperature): 27.00 C (NA/45.00): [OK]
 22617: EvtLogDisabled (Event Logging Disabled): [OK]
 22618: System Event (System Event): [OK]
 22608: SYS_FAN (Fan): 1100.00 RPM (0.00/NA): [OK]
 22621: CPU Thermtrip (Processor): [OK]
 1536: Sys Pwr Monitor (Power Unit): [OK]

Note the typo in CPU_THEMAL.  Good one, HP.  NB_THERMAL is the northbridge temperature, which should be pretty similar to the CPU temperature on this motherboard.  AMBIENT_THERMAL shows temperature inside the case, and SYS_FAN shows the fan speed.  The critical thresholds are listed.

Now, if you’re using Nagios, you will now want the Nagios IPMI Monitoring Plugin.  Get this, and also install perl-IPC-Run .  Run the check as root with sudo, and you’re sorted.  Better explanation of that when I get around to writing more about Nagios.

Oh, and if you’re using SElinux, be prepared to battle with it to make it work properly with Nagios plugins requiring root…

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