Poweredge 1900 & CentOS 5

[Otso Helenius]

>
> The new PE 2950 I have here is exactly the same. Dell failed on
> providing CPU temperatures and fan control...
>

Ok, studied the problems a bit more. I installed freeipmi alongside  
openipmi and noticed that "ipmi-sensors | grep Temp" reports:

1: Temp (Temperature): -53.00 C (NA/90.00): [OK]
2: Temp (Temperature): 50.00 C (NA/90.00): [OK]
3: Ambient Temp (Temperature): 28.00 C (3.00/47.00): [OK]
34: CPU Temp Interf (Temperature): [OK]

whereas Openipmis "ipmitool sdr type Temperature" returns only:

Temp             | 01h | ns | 3.1 | Disabled
Temp             | 02h | ns | 3.2 | Disabled
Ambient Temp     | 08h | ok | 7.1 | 28 degrees C
CPU Temp Interf  | 76h | ns | 7.1 | Disabled

The negative temperature has been discussed in dell community forum  
and elsewhere on the web. (see "poweredge negative ipmi temperature"  
from google).

I have filed a support question to dell regarding the bootup error of  
"Baseboard Management Controller Communication Failure" which i  
suspect is behind all this. I'm wondering if it's just BIOS and other  
pre-boot settings that are behind the failure. If you or any other PE  
1900/1950/2950/2900 user could try to recreate the error message it  
would be helpful (the error shows when one enters the BMC setup with  
Ctrl-e and exits it, just before bootloader starts).

I'd also love to know if just running "sh ESM_FRMW_LX_******.BIN" on  
the BMC RHEL5 DUP packages is safe for BMC while the system is  
running? I was thinking of reflashing BMC in case it would help.

  * Otso Helenius