15

I have a Supermicro IPMI and I read you can use dmidecode to determine which one it is. But all I get for the info is:

Handle 0x0001, DMI type 1, 27 bytes
System Information
    Manufacturer: Supermicro
    Product Name: X9SCL/X9SCM
    Version: 0123456789
    Serial Number: 0123456789
    UUID: *
    Wake-up Type: Power Switch
    SKU Number: To be filled by O.E.M.
    Family: To be filled by O.E.M.

Sadly this leaves me with multiple possible choices on the supermicro site. Any chance to determine the exact one I have installed?

Doridian
  • 321
  • 1
  • 2
  • 7
  • This is a useful question. Many admins who have used IPMI on Supermicro boxes have asked this same question as there are multiple cards in use, as it is very difficult to tell from the commandline (If not impossible). – Stefan Lasiewski Apr 19 '13 at 19:51
  • This is a bit old, but Supermicro provide you a very simple way of looking this up. Go to http://www.supermicro.com/support/bios/ and enter your motherboard version into the box, and it provides the latest BIOS and IPMI downloads. In your particular case, it also shows that the X9SCL and X9SCM motherboards have the same files. – Daniel Lawson Jul 19 '13 at 22:15

8 Answers8

6

There are two ways to do this:

  1. It is possible to a programatically view information about the BMC in your machine. However, in my experience the tools don't provide useful information.

I tried ipmitool bmc info and it returns some information. From here, you'd need a way to map the ID numbers to something which humans can understand:

Manufacturer ID           : 47488
Manufacturer Name         : Unknown (0xB980)
Product ID                : 43707 (0xaabb)
Product Name              : Unknown (0xAABB)

Googling for 47488 & 43707 does yield some hints as to the manufacturer of this card, but that's not very helpful.

  1. Manually. Sadly, this is what most admins end up doing.

Find out your motherboard number, and search the following pages, and use your investigating skills to determine which BMC is yours.

Stefan Lasiewski
  • 22,949
  • 38
  • 129
  • 184
  • 2
    The Product ID in my case has yielded me to the correct IPMI (someone else posted their ipmitool bmc info and said which IPMI they had. The product ID was equal and the specifications he posted were equal to my Hardware/IPMI/Mainboard aswell) – Doridian Apr 21 '13 at 10:32
2

From dmidecode:

IPMI Device Information

Interface Type: KCS (Keyboard Control Style)

Specification Version: 2.0

I2C Slave Address: 0x00

NV Storage Device: Not Present

Base Address: 0x0000000000000CA2 (I/O)

Register Spacing: Successive Byte Boundaries

Did you grep dmidecode for "IPMI"?

egorgry
  • 2,871
  • 2
  • 22
  • 21
Danila Ladner
  • 5,241
  • 21
  • 30
  • Sadly, the information provided by `dmidecode` is very generic and is not very useful to determine the model of the BMC. – Stefan Lasiewski Apr 19 '13 at 19:44
  • 1
    Yeah in this case I think only installation of "Open IPMI" will help adn then connecting to IPMI device you will be able to get vers #. – Danila Ladner Apr 19 '13 at 20:25
  • OpenIPMI can be used to extract the BMC device hardware version (Get Device ID command w/arg device_revision). However, the return string is assigned by the hardware OEM vendor, so there is no consistent method of cross-referencing this information unless you are familiar with how the mobo manufacturer reports it. IOW, it's of limited use. Tyan and Supermicro could build boards with the same BMC and the BMC model could be reported differently between the two boards. AFAIK the recommendations for manual look-ups on OEM board websites are the only fool-proof method to get accurate BMC model info – MrPotatoHead Sep 03 '22 at 15:07
2

I was able to find it right in the boot log/dmesg.

enter image description here

Then simply look for that hardware name on the supermicro firmware page!

marathon
  • 177
  • 7
2

The original question wanted to know how to ask IPMI what the motherboard model is... not disturbing the installed/running OS at all.

Their new "SMCIPMITool.jar" shows motherboard model in the commandline once you've connected to one with it:

./jre/bin/java -jar SMCIPMITool.jar 172.22.16.210 ADMIN ADMIN shell 
SMC IPMI Tool V2.15.0(Build 160122) - Super Micro Computer, Inc. 
Press Ctrl+D or "exit" to exit 
Press "?" or "help" for help 
Press TAB for command completion 
Press UP and DOWN key for command history 
Trap Receiver Started 
172.22.16.210 X9SCD (S0/G0,46w) 22:38 SIM(WA)>exit 
bye

See, without any prior knowledge it shows me it's a X9SCD and I'm done. No need to even look at the console, or disturb whatever horrible OS the client is running (windows...)

Furthermore, the X9SCL/X9SCM are the same IPMI anyway (they list separately, but the files are identical). There are only about 4 different types of BMC used across all boards. Also flashing via web interface, it will check compatibility and complain if you have the wrong firmware.

Also on the prompt line, the actual BMC model at the end (X9SCD uses the "SIM-WA" type...)

Tony Butler
  • 131
  • 1
1

Just thought I'd through another, perhaps easier answer into the pot, especially if you're running Windows. You can use Supermicro's IPMIView application to connect to the server in question and on the "Users" tab (no idea why it's there) it providers the motherboard model and also the system/chassis SKU too (if applicable).

IPMIView screenshot

You can download IPMIview here: https://www.supermicro.com/wftp/utility/IPMIView/

willdashwood
  • 93
  • 1
  • 1
  • 5
  • This shows the motherboard model, not the BMC. – Michael Hampton Oct 02 '20 at 17:16
  • You're right, but once you have the exact motherboard model number you can look it up. If I read/understand the original question correctly, it's that the motherboard model gives 2 choices (Product Name: X9SCL/X9SCM) and so presumably they weren't sure which IPMI firmware to flash. Although as has already been said, they both feature the same BMC/IPMI chipset so you'd flash whatever the latest version is. We've flashed SMT_X9_354 on all our motherboards featuring that chipset but it looks like there might be a newer release (SMT_X9_362) now. – willdashwood Oct 03 '20 at 11:00
1

You can get the unit version in BIOS in the Main tab (keep pressing DEL while booting to get there). Also the current IPMI version can be found in IPMI tab.

Ikar Pohorský
  • 305
  • 3
  • 5
1

The solution I found required me to:

IPMICFG_1.26.0_20161227/Linux/64bit/IPMICFG-Linux.x86_64 -fru list

Board Mfg. Date/Time(BDT)       = 1996/01/01 00:00:00 (00 00 00)
Board Manufacturer (BM)         = Supermicro
Board Product Name (BPN)        = 
Board Serial number (BS)        =           
Board Part number (BP)          = 
Product Manufacturer (PM)       = 
Product Name (PN)               = 
Product Part/Model number (PPM) = 
Product Version (PV)            = 
Product Serial number (PS)      =           
Product Asset Tag (PAT)         =

Which unhelpfully still didn't show the product name. However, reading through the options suggested this potentially useful item:

"-fru 2p Update Board-Product Name from DMITable to IPMI FRU."

Result from running: ./IPMICFG-Linux.x86_64 -fru 2p

Board Mfg. Date/Time(BDT)       = 1996/01/01 00:00:00 (00 00 00)
Board Manufacturer (BM)         = Supermicro
Board Product Name (BPN)        = X10DRi
Board Serial number (BS)        =           
Board Part number (BP)          = 
Product Manufacturer (PM)       = 
Product Name (PN)               = 
Product Part/Model number (PPM) = 
Product Version (PV)            = 
Product Serial number (PS)      =           
Product Asset Tag (PAT)         =

There are various other -fru items that would appear to further populate the list.

Karl Dane
  • 11
  • 1
-1

VMware displays the server model on the login screen enter image description here

steampowered
  • 593
  • 2
  • 10
  • 24