How to find out the exact IPMI unit you have for firmware upgrade?

Solution 1:

There are two ways to do this:

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.

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.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/
http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/ipmi.cfm
http://www.supermicro.com/support/bios/firmware0.aspx

Solution 2:

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

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

Solution 3:

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...)

Solution 4:

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"?

Solution 5:

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.