Establish an IPMI Serial-Over-Lan Session

Start a remote SOL session.

This example shows how to establish an SOL session to a remote system: prod-001 whose BMC IP is 10.10.128.3.

  1. Using the admin user on prod-001, this command fails as admin does not have payload mode enabled.
    [root@mgmt2 ~]# ipmitool -Ilanplus -H10.10.128.3 -Uadmin -Padmin sol activate
Info: SOL payload disabled
[root@mgmt2 ~]#
  2. List the users on the remote system.
    To start an SOL session, the user (admin) must have ADMINISTRATOR privileges and IPMI Msg must be true.
    [root@mgmt2 ~]# ipmitool -Ilanplus -H10.10.128.3 -Uadmin -Padmin user list 1
ID  Name             Callin  Link Auth  IPMI Msg   Channel Priv Limit
1                    true    false      true       ADMINISTRATOR
2   root             false   true       true       ADMINISTRATOR
3   test1            false   false      true       ADMINISTRATOR
4   ace              true    false      true       OPERATOR
5   admin            true    true       true       ADMINISTRATOR
  3. Enable SOL access for the user, enable payload mode on channel for user 5 (admin):
    [root@mgmt2 ~]# ipmitool -Ilanplus -H10.10.128.3 -Uadmin -Padmin sol payload enable 1 5
  4. Activate the SOL mode for the user and establish a connection:
    [root@mgmt2 ~]# ipmitool -Ilanplus -H10.10.128.3 -Uadmin -Padmin sol activate
[SOL Session operational.  Use ~? for help]

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 7.1 (Maipo)
Kernel 3.10.0-229.el7.x86_64 on an x86_64

prod-0001 login:
  5. Log in to the remote system using the SOL session. End the session using the ~. escape characters:
    prod-0001 login: root
Password:
Last login: Thu Jul 21 12:31:23 from mgmt1
[root@prod-0001 ~]# cd /
[root@prod-0001 /]# ls
appfs    dev       global      lib         misc  proc  selinux   tmp
bin      etc       ha_cluster  lib64       mnt   root  srv       usr
boot     export    home        lost+found  net   run   sys       var
cluster  fastboot  images      media       opt   sbin  tftpboot
[root@prod-0001 /]#  ~. [terminated ipmitool]
[root@mgmt2 ~]#

SOL Errors

This error indicates the user's IPMI Mesg is set to false:
[root@mgmt2 ~]# ipmitool -Ilanplus -H10.10.128.3 -Uadmin -Padmin sol activate
Error: Unable to establish IPMI v2 / RMCP+ session
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
[root@mgmt2 ~]#

This error indicates the user's Channel Priv Limit is not set to Administrator:

[root@mgmt2 ~]# ipmitool -Ilanplus -H10.10.128.3 -Umonitor -Pmonitor sol activate
Set Session Privilege Level to ADMINISTRATOR failed: Unknown (0x81)
Error: Unable to establish IPMI v2 / RMCP+ session
Error: No response activating SOL payload
[root@mgmt2 ~]#