Resetting frozen iDRAC without unplugging the server

News Dell DRAC Recommended Links iDRAC7 goes unresponsive - can't connect to iDRAC7 RACADM Command Line Interface iLO 3 -- HP engineering fiasco
IPMI ipmitool Updating the DRAC  Firmware Configuring Platform Events vFlash PERC controller
 Administration of Remote Servers Getting console via ssh in DRAC Resetting frozen iDRAC without unplugging the server Sysadmin Horror Stories Humor Etc

This page is just a summary of the important topic. This topic in more details is covered in iDRAC7 goes unresponsive - can't connect to iDRAC7

NOTE: older of DRAC7  required periodic reset which can be done via cron weekly  (two time a month is not enough)  using the command:

racadm -r 10.10.10.1 -u joeadmin -p nyc3014 racreset

There are several ways to reset DRAC:

If DRAC is still alive you can reboot it via ssh, or racadm.

i-button for resetting DRAC -- well kept Dell secret

What Dell (unlike HP and CISCO) did right is that on rack servers like R620 and R720 it provides a button with the letter i on it (i-button) to reset DRAC on the front panel of the server. On R620 this is small button located to the right of power button and it has a letter i on it. The button is very small, much smaller in diameter then the power button (which shine with solid green). On R710 it is below (shown on the picture). On R620 to the right of power button.  You need to press the button for 20 sec continuously to force the reboot. As you press it it start to shine with solid blue and then the light goes off and stays off. 

To reboot the iDRAC you need to press the button for 20 sec

Paradoxically despite chronic problems with DRAC this button is well kept Dell secret and it is easy to learn about its existence by placing a support call.

Paradoxically despite chronic problems with DRAC this button is well kept Dell secret and it is easy to learn about its existence by placing a support call.

I was unable to get information about it (and does not suspect about it existence) for the first nine month of the life of my first R620 server despite opening several tickets with Dell about DRAC problems.

You can't use ipmitool to reboot Drac Enterprise

Theoretically instead of racadm you can try to  reboot DRAC from the server OS using the ipmitool command from ipmitool-1.8.11-16.el6.x86_64 package. And there are several post on the Internet suggesting this command:

  ipmitool mc reset warm
It does not work with Dell DRAC Enterprise edition. Use a local installation of racadm instead. In my version of impitool even command ipmitool mc info hangs with iDrac7 Enterprise edition.

Attempt to find channel does not work either (MykoSpark blog, February 25, 2014):

for channel in {0..15}; do
ipmitool lan print ${channel} &>/dev/null
   [[ $? -eq 0 ]] && echo "${channel}"
done
IPMITool is separate non-Dell software, and it looks like Dell does not provide support for it for iDRAC7 Enterprise. IPMI is also used extensively in the BMC, which is a remote management tool with significantly reduced functionality compared to iDRAC 7 enterprise.

Looks like you cannot reset the iDRAC using ipmitool.

 


Top Visited
Switchboard
Latest
Past week
Past month

NEWS CONTENTS

Old News ;-)

Reset DELL idrac using SSH

Posted on 2012/11/13 by Fred

How to reboot an DELL idrac when web page refuse access:

Connect to idrac IP using ssh with the password refused by web page

$ ssh [email protected]
[email protected]'s password:

The magic DELL tool is here : radadm

/admin1-> racadm
===============================================================================
 RACADM version 1.80 (Build 17)
 Copyright (c) 2003-2010 Dell, Inc.
 All Rights Reserved
 ===============================================================================
RACADM usage syntax:
racadm <subcommand> <options>
Examples:
racadm getsysinfo
 racadm getsysinfo -d
 racadm getniccfg
 racadm setniccfg -d
 racadm setniccfg -s 192.168.0.120 255.255.255.0 192.168.0.1
 racadm getconfig -g cfgLanNetworking
Display a list of available subcommands for the RAC:
racadm help
Display more detailed help for a specific subcommand:
racadm help <subcommand>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So to reboot :
/admin1-> racadm racreset soft
RAC reset operation initiated successfully. It may take up to a minute
for the RAC to come back online again.
/admin1-> Connection to 192.168.0.120 closed by remote host.
Connection to 192.168.0.120 closed.

http://www.interworks.com/blogs/tnguyen/2011/07/18/resetting-dell-idrac-or-drac-card

Sometimes those pesky DRAC cards in the Dell servers just seem to not respond or act up. If you still have CLI access to it, you can reset it a two different ways.

If you are local to the machine, and it has OpenManage installed (OMSA), use this command to perform a soft-reset:

c:\racadm racreset soft

It will acknowledge that it has completed and you have to wait a few minutes.

If you are remote you need to have the DRAC tools installed, and credentials to use the command:

racadm -r <ip address> -u <username> -p <password> racreset soft

This will perform a "soft" reset, or a power cycle. No settings will be lost or changed.This is useful as the DRAC operates independently of the server and does not power cycle when the server does.

If the settings on the DRAC have become corrupted and you need to reset it to factory settings, the command is as follows:

Local

racadm racresetcfg

Remote

racadm -r <ip address> -u <username> -p <password> racresetcfg

This reset will set everything back to factory defaults. You will lose connection remotely as it will also reset the DRAC back to the default IP scheme.



Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotesSomerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose BierceBernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOSProgramming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC developmentScripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-MonthHow to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D


Copyright © 1996-2021 by Softpanorama Society. www.softpanorama.org was initially created as a service to the (now defunct) UN Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) without any remuneration. This document is an industrial compilation designed and created exclusively for educational use and is distributed under the Softpanorama Content License. Original materials copyright belong to respective owners. Quotes are made for educational purposes only in compliance with the fair use doctrine.

FAIR USE NOTICE This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to advance understanding of computer science, IT technology, economic, scientific, and social issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided by section 107 of the US Copyright Law according to which such material can be distributed without profit exclusively for research and educational purposes.

This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free) site written by people for whom English is not a native language. Grammar and spelling errors should be expected. The site contain some broken links as it develops like a living tree...

You can use PayPal to to buy a cup of coffee for authors of this site

Disclaimer:

The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or referenced source) and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without Javascript.

Last modified: February, 21, 2021