BMC Interface Status

rje · January 29, 2024, 8:17pm

What is the current status of BMC (IPMI, Redfish) Support in Foreman? I see the Smart Proxy has support for the Identify LED, Sensors, FRU, etc. Does Foreman’s web interface expose any of that?

People have also mentioned getting SOL working or VNC to BMCs that support those. Has any of that made it into the product?

Thank you!

lzap · February 7, 2024, 10:17am

Hey, Foreman has very basic BMC support in the UI and CLI, basically just power operations with IPMI and Redfish implementations. There is also a “change boot order” call although that is a bit clunky.

I am not sure where you see LED/Sensors/FRU implementations, I am not aware of any of that:

github.com

theforeman/smart-proxy/blob/develop/modules/bmc/redfish.rb

require 'redfish_client'
require 'bmc/base'
require 'bmc/redfish/dell'
require 'bmc/redfish/hpe'

module Proxy
  module BMC
    class Redfish < Base
      include Proxy::Log
      include Proxy::Util

      def initialize(args)
        @redfish_verify_ssl = Proxy::BMC::Plugin.settings.redfish_verify_ssl
        super
        load_vendor_overrides
      end

      def connect(args = { })
        connection = RedfishClient.new("https://#{args[:host]}/", verify: @redfish_verify_ssl)
        connection.login(args[:username], args[:password])

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rje · February 9, 2024, 10:06pm

I was looking at the IPMI code in Smart Proxies that has expanded functions but they look unexposed in Forman:

github.com

theforeman/smart-proxy/blob/develop/modules/bmc/ipmi.rb#L88


      
            end
            Rubyipmi.connect(args[:username], args[:password], args[:host], args[:bmc_provider], options)
          end
          
          # returns boolean true if connection to device is successful
          def test
            host.connection_works?
          end
          
          # Turn the led light on
          def identifyon
            host.chassis.identify(true)
          end
          
          # Turn the led light off
          def identifyoff
            host.chassis.identify(false)
          end
          
          # Return true or false if power is on
          def poweron?

github.com

theforeman/smart-proxy/blob/develop/modules/bmc/ipmi.rb#L202


      
          def version
            host.bmc.version
          end
          
          # BMC reset
          def reset(type = 'cold')
            host.bmc.reset(type)
          end
          
          # print all FRU information
          def frulist
            frulist = host.fru.list
            # Detect quirk on ipmitool or bmc_provider!=freeipmi
            if frulist.empty? && !host.is_a?(Rubyipmi::Freeipmi::Connection)
              return "Unknown error getting fru list. Try bmc_provider=freeipmi for possible quirk workaround."
            end
            frulist
          rescue Exception => e
            msg = "Error getting fru list"
            begin
              # Surprisingly, this works around an undocumented feature or bug with

lzap · February 12, 2024, 8:05am

Yes, a lot of BMC code was either unused or removed (?). I do not remember. Feel free to take a stab at it - BMC needs to be vastly improved. It was fine for BIOS systems but with EFI it is a lot harder to live without it.