Serial Over LAN (SOL)

If the external NVIDIA® BlueField® serial connection is not available to the switch (i.e., not connected), BMC software enables access to the BlueField through an internal serial connection redirected over an IP address.

To establish the SOL connection, users may retrieve information from the redfish/v1/Systems/Bluefield schema. Inside the SerialConsole properties (SSH, IPMI), there are various methods that a client can utilize to initiate a serial session with the host through its manager.

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curl -k -u root:'<password>' -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -X GET https://<bmc_ip>/redfish/v1/Systems/Bluefield

Example output:

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{ ... "SerialConsole": { "IPMI": { "ServiceEnabled": true }, "MaxConcurrentSessions": 15, "SSH": { "HotKeySequenceDisplay": "Press ~. to exit console", "Port": 2200, "ServiceEnabled": true } }, ... }

Based on the information provided, it is possible to establish a connection to the system's serial interface using the configured settings. In the following example, an SSH connection is utilized to connect to the system's serial interface:

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ssh <bmc_ip> -p <port-number>

The port number can be obtain from the SerialConsole schema. In this example, that would be port 2200.

To connect to serial-over-LAN use the following IPMI command from an external server:

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ipmitool -C 17 -I lanplus -H <ip-address-of-bmc > -U ADMIN -P ADMIN sol activate

For example:

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ipmitool -C 17 -I lanplus -H 10.10.10.10 -U ADMIN -P ADMIN sol activate [SOL Session operational. Use ~? for help]   Poky (Yocto Project Reference Distro)   2.3.1 bluefield /dev/ttyAMA0   bluefield login:

The IPMI SOL commands are listed in the following table:

No.

Function

Command

Description

1

Get SOL info

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ipmitool sol info

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ipmitool sol info 1

Get SOL configuration data

2

Enable SOL access

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ipmitool sol set set-in-progress set-complete 1

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ipmitool sol set enabled true 1

Enable the properties to be set via set-in-progress then enable SOL access

3

Activate SOL

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ipmitool -C 17 -I lanplus -U <username> -P <password> -H <ip_address> sol activate

Where:

  • -U – BMC username

  • -H – BMC IP address

  • -P – BMC password

Activate SOL access to the BlueField console

4

Deactivate SOL

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ipmitool -C 17 -I lanplus -U <username> -P <password> -H <ip_address> sol deactivate

Deactivate SOL access to the BlueField console

Warning

SOL feature can be used even if BlueField is configured to use UART1/ttyAMA1.

© Copyright 2023, NVIDIA. Last updated on Mar 18, 2024.