ipmievd(8)

💅 ipmievd(8) — the manual page, but make it make sense

okay bestie, welcome to ipmievd — the IPMI event daemon for sending events to syslog ✨ she's the chill background friend who just listens and writes things down. no cap.

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🌸 SYNOPSIS

ipmievd [-c|-h|-d N|-v|-V] -I open <open | sel> [<option>]

ipmievd [-c|-h|-v|-V] -I lan -H <hostname>
        [-p <port>]
        [-U <username>]
        [-A <authtype>]
        [-L <privlvl>]
        [-a|-E|-P|-f <password>]
        [-o <oemtype>]
        [-O <sel oem>]
        sel [<option>]

ipmievd [-c|-h|-v|-V] -I lanplus -H <hostname>
        [-p <port>]
        [-U <username>]
        [-L <privlvl>]
        [-a|-E|-P|-f <password>]
        [-o <oemtype>]
        [-O <sel oem>]
        [-C <ciphersuite>]
        sel [<option>]

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💖 DESCRIPTION

so like. ipmievd is a daemon that sits there listening for events coming off the BMC that are being sent to the SEL, and it also logs those messages to syslog. that's the whole vibe 🫶

she can run in one of two modes — pick your fighter:

• using the Event Message Buffer and asynchronous event notification from the OpenIPMI kernel driver, or
• actively polling the contents of the SEL for new events.

the moment an event arrives via either mechanism, it gets logged to syslog with the LOG_LOCAL4 facility. slay. 💅

she's based on the ipmitool utility and shares the same IPMI interface support and session setup options. for more info on supported IPMI interfaces, go peek at the ipmitool manpage. iykyk ✨

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -a — prompts you for the remote server password. polite of her.
• -A <authtype> — pick an authentication type to use during IPMIv1.5 lan session activation. supported types are NONE, PASSWORD, MD2, MD5, or OEM.
• -c — present output in CSV (comma separated variable) format. heads up: this is not available with all commands 🥲
• -C <ciphersuite> — the remote server authentication, integrity, and encryption algorithms to use for IPMIv2 lanplus connections. see table 22-19 in the IPMIv2 specification. the default is 3, which specifies RAKP-HMAC-SHA1 authentication, HMAC-SHA1-96 integrity, and AES-CBC-128 encryption algorithms. cute and cryptographic 💜
• -E — the remote server password is specified by the environment variable IPMI_PASSWORD. no typing, we love to see it.
• -f <password_file> — specifies a file containing the remote server password. if this option is absent, or if password_file is empty, the password will default to NULL. iconic empty-string behavior honestly.
• -h — get basic usage help from the command line. the classic cry for help ���
• -H <address> — remote server address; can be an IP address or hostname. this option is required for lan and lanplus interfaces. don't forget it bestie.
• -I <interface> — selects the IPMI interface to use. the supported interfaces that are compiled in are visible in the usage help output 👀
• -L <privlvl> — force session privilege level. can be CALLBACK, USER, OPERATOR, ADMIN. default is ADMIN. main character energy only.
• -m <local_address> — set the local IPMB address. the default is 0x20 and there should be no need to change it for normal operation. leave her alone fr fr.
• -o <oemtype> — select OEM type to support. this usually involves minor hacks in place in the code to work around quirks in various BMCs from various manufacturers 🙈 use -o list to see a list of current supported OEM types.
• -O <sel oem> — open selected file and read OEM SEL event descriptions to be used during SEL listings. see examples in the contrib dir for the file format.
• -p <port> — remote server UDP port to connect to. default is 623.
• -P <password> — remote server password is specified on the command line. if supported it will be obscured in the process list. Note! specifying the password as a command line option is not recommended. seriously. put it down. 😭
• -S <sdr_cache_file> — use a local file for the remote SDR cache. using a local SDR cache can drastically increase performance for commands that require knowledge of the entire SDR to perform their function. speed. ⚡
• -t <target_address> — bridge IPMI requests to the remote target address.
• -U <username> — remote server username, default is NULL user.
• -d N — use device number N to specify the /dev/ipmiN (or /dev/ipmi/N or /dev/ipmidev/N) device to use for in-band BMC communication. used to target a specific BMC on a multi-node, multi-BMC system through the ipmi device driver interface. default is 0.
• -v — increase verbose output level. this option may be specified multiple times to increase the level of debug output. if given three times you will get hexdumps of all incoming and outgoing packets. three times = full hexdump chaos, we love a dramatic escalation 🔥
• -V — display version information.

if no password method is specified then ipmievd will prompt the user for a password. if no password is entered at the prompt, the remote server password will default to NULL. yes, NULL. she's not mad, she's just disappointed 🥲

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🎀 COMMANDS

• help — this can be used to get command-line help. it may also be placed at the end of commands to get option usage help.

> ipmievd help
Commands:
    open    Use OpenIPMI for asynchronous notification of events
    sel     Poll SEL for notification of events

• open — this command starts ipmievd with the OpenIPMI event watching mechanism, which relies on the Event Message Buffer feature of IPMI. this requires a properly installed and configured OpenIPMI driver on Linux and is only valid to be run through the open interface. see the ipmitool manpage and associated documentation for more information on setting up the OpenIPMI driver.

Note: some BMC do not support the Event Message Buffer required for this command. other BMCs claim to support it but do not actually deliver events to it. if this is the case please use the sel method instead. (rude of them, honestly 💀)

• daemon — launch process as a daemon and reparent to init process. all messages will be sent to syslog. this is the default action.
• nodaemon — do NOT become a daemon, instead log all messages to stderr.
• pidfile=<filename> — save process ID to this file when in daemon mode. defaults to /run/ipmievd.pidN (where N is the ipmi device number — defaults to 0).

• sel — this command starts ipmievd with the SEL Polling event watching mechanism. this will poll the SEL periodically to determine if new events have been logged. this command should work with all BMCs and is capable of using the lan interface as well to monitor a remote system and log its events to a local syslog. the reliable one. the people's champ 👑
  • daemon — launch process as a daemon and reparent to init process. all messages will be sent to syslog. this is the default action.
  • nodaemon — do NOT become a daemon, instead log all messages to stderr.
  • pidfile=<filename> — save process ID to this file when in daemon mode. defaults to /run/ipmievd.pidN (where N is the ipmi device number — defaults to 0).
  • timeout=<seconds> — time between checks for SEL polling method. default is 10 seconds.

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🦋 EXAMPLES

Example 1: Daemon process watching OpenIPMI for events

> ipmievd -I open open daemon

Example 2: Local non-daemon process checking remote SEL every 30 seconds

> ipmievd -I lan -H 1.2.3.4 -f passfile sel nodaemon timeout=30
Reading Sensors...
Waiting for Events...

literally the "Waiting for Events..." is her just vibing. we stan a patient queen 💜

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🌈 FILES

• /usr/share/misc/enterprise-numbers — system IANA PEN registry taken from http://www.iana.org/assignments/enterprise-numbers
• ~/.local/usr/share/misc/enterprise-numbers — user's override for the system IANA PEN registry. this file, if it exists, is loaded instead of the system registry (see above). your file, your rules ✨

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👑 AUTHOR

Duncan Laurie <duncan@iceblink.org>

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🔥 SEE ALSO

• IPMItool Homepage — http://ipmitool.sourceforge.net
• Intelligent Platform Management Interface Specification — http://www.intel.com/design/servers/ipmi
• OpenIPMI Homepage — http://openipmi.sourceforge.net

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okay that's the whole page, go forth and daemon responsibly 🧚 and hey — credit where it's due: this page is by Duncan Laurie, and the ipmievd(8) footer stamped it as ipmievd(8) too, so like… the source, the version and the date all live right there in that little footer line. periodt 💅💖