I’ve long known that you can use IPMI (on compatible systems) for some nice lights-out management, like power control or reading system information that you’d see in the BIOS. But one thing that has always annoyed me is having to get a remote console on the box and wait for just the right second to press the right key to bring up the screen where I can change boot order.
Lo and behold, this is an IPMI feature! It’s implemented at least on some IBM servers I’m working with:
mawagner ~ $ ipmitool -H 172.16.10.1 -U USERID chassis bootdev Password: bootdev <device> [clear-cmos=yes|no] bootdev <device> [options=help,...] none : Do not change boot device order pxe : Force PXE boot disk : Force boot from default Hard-drive safe : Force boot from default Hard-drive, request Safe Mode diag : Force boot from Diagnostic Partition cdrom : Force boot from CD/DVD bios : Force boot into BIOS Setup floppy: Force boot from Floppy/primary removable media
mawagner ~ $ ipmitool -H 172.16.10.1 -U USERID chassis bootdev cdrom Password: Set Boot Device to cdrom
It appears that this will override settings on the next boot, but not make a persistent change. (You can, however, set the ‘persistent’ option.) Using bootdev none options=help lists out the available options, some of which are pretty interesting.
Is there any way to determine what the default boot disk is? I have a system running with multiple OS images, and I’d like to select a particular image for the next reboot. If so, it possible to alter the default via ipmitool?
ipmitool -H Server1 -U -P chassis bootparam get 5
will give you the
Boot Device Selector : Force Boot from Floppy/primary removable media
which tells you the default boot devices is been set to
Awesome. Thank you.
Hi,
I’ve been trying to use the commands you’ve given here but they don’t seem to be working for me :/
I keep getting this every time i run an ipmitool command:
Error: Unable to establish LAN sessionError: Unable to establish IPMI v1.5 / RMCP session
if you know why I’d appreciate the help :)
Hello Josh,
For error you mentioned
Error: Unable to establish IPMI v1.5 / RMCP session
-if you are Admin, then you it is easy fix, you should be able to login to the mgmnt using your admin creds and reimage the system.
– If you have local access to the system, hook up your crash cart and update BMC and that should fix the issue for you.
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