Initial configuration of a PE1950

[Matt Lawrence]

I have a number of brand new PowerEdge 1950 systems that I need to 
configure and install Linux on.  These things don't have a console on 
them and it would be significant hassle to connect a console to them one 
by one.  My initial plan was to see if I could connect to the BMC and go 
from there.

It seems that fresh out of the box, the BMC doesn't try to do a DHCP 
request when power is applied to the chassis.  This means that I am 
unable to see the MAC address of the BMC or assign an IP address to it.  
This means I have no way of remotely controlling the box.  Would someone 
on this list who has much more experience with these systems confirm 
this or tell me what I am doing wrong?

So, on to plan B.  Since PXEboot seems to be the default, install a 
minimal Linux including the Dell utilities for talking to the BMC and 
configure it to a static address that I can access it remotely.  This 
will be considerably more time consuming, but quite possible.  I suppose 
the ideal would be to build a custom pxelinux image.  I have never had a 
need to to this, so words of advice are certanly welcome.  The stock Red 
Hat pxelinux.0 and kickstart configuration have always been quite 
adequate for me.  In fact, once I get the MAC addresses of the systems 
(not the BMC), they will going into dhcpd.conf on the DHCP server so 
that any future installations will just work.

Am I missing something?  Is there a better way for me to approach this 
problem?

I'm new here, so thank you for all the help.

-- Matt