{"id":178,"date":"2016-05-08T17:05:25","date_gmt":"2016-05-08T15:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.le-vert.net\/?p=178"},"modified":"2016-05-09T10:03:30","modified_gmt":"2016-05-09T08:03:30","slug":"fixing-non-working-idrac-on-poweredge-server-r610","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.le-vert.net\/?p=178","title":{"rendered":"Fixing non-working iDrac on PowerEdge server (R610)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\t\t\tTweet<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/div>

It seems Dell released a couple of servers with a broken embedded iDirac.
\nActually the issue comes from the on-board Broadcom ethernet chip which is not configured correctly: http:\/\/permalink.gmane.org\/gmane.linux.hardware.dell.poweredge\/42033<\/a><\/p>\n

Spot the issue<\/h1>\n

Here is how to confirm your issue is related to this bug and not something else. Boot the server and press CTRL+E to get into the iDrac BIOS. Select the network submenu and check the Active LOM<\/strong> entry. LOM stands for L<\/strong>AN O<\/strong>n M<\/strong>otherboard.<\/p>\n

If it says No Active LOM<\/strong> even if you selected Shared above, it means the iDrac is unable to bind on any on-board LAN, this means you are having this issue.<\/p>\n

\"01_broken_lom\"<\/p>\n

Then, we’ll create a DOS-based floppy disk image containing some Broadcom firmware related tools that will reconfigure the embedded network controller so it can be use for the iDrac board.<\/p>\n

Create a PXE bootable disk image with Broadcom utilities<\/h1>\n

Download Bcom_LAN_14.2.x_DOSUtilities_A03.exe<\/strong> from http:\/\/www.dell.com\/support\/home\/us\/en\/19\/Drivers\/DriversDetails?driverId=29DKK<\/a> and get a terminal in the download directory.<\/p>\n

We will now dowload a FreeDOS disk image (that can be PXE booted) and we’ll add the required tools in the image.<\/p>\n


\nwget http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pub\/micro\/pc-stuff\/freedos\/files\/distributions\/1.0\/fdboot.img
\nmkdir mount
\nsudo mount -t vfat -o loop fdboot.img mount\/<\/p>\n

unzip Bcom_LAN_14.2.x_DOSUtilities_A03.exe
\nsudo cp .\/Userdiag\/NetXtremeII\/uxdiag.exe mount\/<\/p>\n

sudo sh -c 'echo uxdiag -t abcd -mfw 1 > mount\/idrac.bat'<\/p>\n

sudo umount mount<\/p>\n

mv fdboot.img fdboot-fix-poweredge-idrac.img
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

Now we have a FreeDOS containing Broadcom uxdiag<\/strong> tool as well as a idrac.bat<\/strong> script that will start the required command.<\/p>\n

Copy the img file to your PXE server and set the following to start it with PXELinux (pxelinux.cfg\/default):<\/p>\n

LABEL fix-idrac
\n KERNEL memdisk
\n APPEND initrd=fdboot-fix-poweredge-idrac.img<\/code><\/p>\n

If you don’t have memdisk binary<\/strong> it can be found in package syslinux-common<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Then you can restart your server and trigger a PXE boot. Once FreeDOS starts, select the Safe Mode<\/strong> entry (I had some issue of memory being full when using another entry).<\/p>\n

\"02_freedos_booting\"<\/p>\n

Then, type idract.bat<\/strong> to start the batch script we added inside the disk image:<\/p>\n

\"03_run_script\"<\/p>\n

Broadcom tools will run for a couple of seconds and output something like this:<\/p>\n

\"04_uxdiag_processing\"<\/p>\n

Restart the server and hit CTRL+E to get inside the iDrac again; it’s now binding on LOM1 aka the ethernet port with label “1”:<\/p>\n

\"05_fixed_lom\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems Dell released a couple of servers with a broken embedded iDirac. Actually the issue comes from the on-board Broadcom ethernet chip which is not configured correctly: http:\/\/permalink.gmane.org\/gmane.linux.hardware.dell.poweredge\/42033 Spot the issue Here is how to confirm your issue is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.le-vert.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.le-vert.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.le-vert.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.le-vert.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.le-vert.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.le-vert.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":193,"href":"https:\/\/blog.le-vert.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions\/193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.le-vert.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.le-vert.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.le-vert.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}