Dell OMSA

Following on from my IPMI explorations, here's the next chapter in my getting-down-and-dirty-with-dell-hardware-on-linux adventures. This time I'm setting up Dell's OpenManage Server Administrator software, primarily in order to explore being able to configure bios settings from within the OS. As before, I'm running CentOS 5, but OMSA supports any of RHEL4, RHEL5, SLES9, and SLES10, and various versions of Fedora Core and OpenSUSE.

Here's what I did to get up and running:

# Configure the Dell OMSA repository
wget -O bootstrap.sh http://linux.dell.com/repo/hardware/latest/bootstrap.cgi
# Review the script to make sure you trust it, and then run it
sh bootstrap.sh
# OR, for CentOS5/RHEL5 x86_64 you can just install the following:
rpm -Uvh http://linux.dell.com/repo/hardware/latest/platform_independent/rh50_64/prereq/\
dell-omsa-repository-2-5.noarch.rpm

# Install base version of OMSA, without gui (install srvadmin-all for more)
yum install srvadmin-base

# One of daemons requires /usr/bin/lockfile, so make sure you've got procmail installed
yum install procmail

# If you're running an x86_64 OS, there are a couple of additional 32-bit
#   libraries you need that aren't dependencies in the RPMs
yum install compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-61.i386 pam.i386

# Start OMSA daemons
for i in instsvcdrv dataeng dsm_om_shrsvc; do service $i start; done

# Finally, you can update your path by doing logout/login, or just run:
. /etc/profile.d/srvadmin-path.sh

Now to check whether you're actually functional you can try a few of the following (as root):

omconfig about
omreport about
omreport system -?
omreport chassis -?

omreport is the OMSA CLI reporting/query tool, and omconfig is the equivalent update tool. The main documentation for the current version of OMSA is here. I found the CLI User's Guide the most useful.

Here's a sampler of interesting things to try:

# Report system overview
omreport chassis

# Report system summary info (OS, CPUs, memory, PCIe slots, DRAC cards, NICs)
omreport system summary

# Report bios settings
omreport chassis biossetup

# Fan info
omreport chassis fans

# Temperature info
omreport chassis temps

# CPU info
omreport chassis processors

# Memory and memory slot info
omreport chassis memory

# Power supply info
omreport chassis pwrsupplies

# Detailed PCIe slot info
omreport chassis slots

# DRAC card info
omreport chassis remoteaccess

omconfig allows setting object attributes using a key=value syntax, which can get reasonably complex. See the CLI User's Guide above for details, but here are some examples of messing with various bios settings:

# See available attributes and settings
omconfig chassis biossetup -?

# Turn the AC Power Recovery setting to On
omconfig chassis biossetup attribute=acpwrrecovery setting=on

# Change the serial communications setting (on with serial redirection via)
omconfig chassis biossetup attribute=serialcom setting=com1
omconfig chassis biossetup attribute=serialcom setting=com2

# Change the external serial connector
omconfig chassis biossetup attribute=extserial setting=com1
omconfig chassis biossetup attribute=extserial setting=rad

# Change the Console Redirect After Boot (crab) setting
omconfig chassis biossetup attribute=crab setting=enabled
omconfig chassis biossetup attribute=crab setting=disabled

# Change NIC settings (turn on PXE on NIC1)
omconfig chassis biossetup attribute=nic1 setting=enabledwithpxe

Finally, there are some interesting formatting options available to both omreport, for use in scripting e.g.

# Custom delimiter format (default semicolon)
omreport chassis -fmt cdv

# XML format
omreport chassis -fmt xml

# To change the default cdv delimiter
omconfig preferences cdvformat -?
omconfig preferences cdvformat delimiter=pipe
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