Getting Started

This section provides an end-to-end setup process for installing and running BMC.

• A variety of text editors are pre-installed, including vi and nano.

• Access to a Linux or UNIX shell is needed. For Windows users, employing a Linux environment like Cygwin as the command line tool is recommended for interacting with BMC.

• There must be some kind of management port allowing access to the BMC controller (either via host, USB, or direct BMC management port).

When starting BMC for the first time, the management port sends a DHCP request. To determine the IP address of the switch's BMC management port, the MAC address of the switch's BMC can be cross referenced with the DHCP server.

The MAC address is typically located on the side of the switch tray or on the box in which the unit ships.

Login Credentials

The default installation includes two accounts which have full system privileges:

1. The system account (root). The root account uses the default password 0penBmc.

   Note

   It is mandatory to change the default root password when logging in for the first time. Refer to the "Change BMC User Password" RF command.

2. The user account (admin).

   Note

   While the admin user exists, it should not be deleted nor renamed and its password should not be changed.

In this quick start guide, the root account is used to configure the BMC.

All accounts can use remote SSH login. Note that the SSH auto-logout is 15 minutes.

Serial Console Management

The serial console is directed by default to the host and can be modified to show the BMC output by issuing a command.

            

            
# from within BMC's shell
BMC_TO_CPU_UART=/sys/devices/platform/ahb/ahb:apb/ahb:apb:bus@1e78a000/1e78a300.i2c-bus/i2c-5/5-0031/mlxreg-io/hwmon/hwmon*/uart_sel
# Switch UART to CPU.
echo 1 > $BMC_TO_CPU_UART
# Switch UART to BMC.
echo 0 > $BMC_TO_CPU_UART
        

It is recommended to perform management and configuration over the network, either in-band or out-of-band. A serial console is fully supported.

The standard baud rate for the serial console is 115200, with an RJ45 as the physical connection interface.

Wired Ethernet Management

A BMC always provides two dedicated Ethernet management ports called "eth0" and "usb0". The interface eth0 is specifically for out-of-band management use and the usb0 is the in-band interface through which the CPU may interact with the BMC. By default, the management interface uses DHCP for addressing.