HP Integrity rx1600 HP Management Base Installation and User's Guide for Linux - Page 7

1 Overview of HP Management Base HP Management Base is a collection of software that includes driver modules, daemons, shared libraries, lookup files, and utility support for other HP manageability software (such as SNMP Agents or WBEM providers). All HP Integrity servers provide their platform manageability information using hardware that follows the Intelligent Platform Management Initiative (IPMI) specification. A key component of IPMI is the Baseboard Management Controller (BMC). Access to the BMC under Linux access is granted by the Open IPMI device driver. The Open IPMI device driver started as an independent project and was accepted into the formal Linux kernel as of 2.4.22 and 2.6. Throughout its development, this driver has not taken full advantage of the capabilities of HP Integrity platforms, and some problems exist with older commercial Linux distributions: • The driver is not included at all. • The driver is included but does not work across the entire HP Integrity line. A similar situation exists with the ACPI driver. The HP Management Base RPM supplies patched drivers for both ACPI and IPMI that work across the Integrity Server product line for all supported distributions. Pursuant to the GPL, source for these patched drivers is included. Other utilities and data files comprise the remainder of the RPM. Conceptual Overview Because a kernel build environment might not be present, the Open IPMI driver is shipped as compiled binaries. The source code is also included for GPL compliance. The HP Management Base installation matches the correct binary to the running kernel. If none match, warnings are printed and you must build binaries per the provided instructions. HP Management Base can be reconfigured to use customer-generated modules. HP Management Base includes the following: • A set of binary drivers for multiple revisions of multiple distributions • Source code to those patched drivers for GPL compliance • start-up scripts (/etc/init.d/hpmgmtbase and helpers) to configure and load the correct driver and set up the device file • hpbmc, a general-purpose tool that accesses the information maintained by the BMC. This includes - Chassis identity (model number, serial number, and so on) - Sensor Data Record Repository (SDRR, defined in IPMI), the material list of the BMC - System Event Log (SEL, defined in IPMI), where the BMC stores low-level chassis events (sensor conditions, firmware events) - Forward Progress Log (FPL, an HP extension), where the BMC stores informational events (similar to the POST log in x86 platforms) - Current sensor readings - CPU, DIMM, and PCI slot population - Cell and partition assignments (midrange and high-end systems only) - MP card information (IP address) • hpia64info, a utility that reports IPMI information for HP Integrity servers. • hpmodel, a utility that reports hardware model information. • hpuid (named after a similar utility on Compaq Proliant hardware), a utility that controls the Locator LED on a system. • hpipmid, a daemon that caches IPMI data. Conceptual Overview 7