Dell Openmanage on Linux Debian
If you have ever tried to get any Hardware Management software running for a major vendor (i.e. Dell or HP) for any Linux system other than Redhat you will have no doubt endured some considerable pain……hopefully, you have found this post and it may have eased that pain somewhat :).
I have put this together using several articles, mail list postings and FAQs and will give give credit where its due.
The guys at https://subtrac.sara.nl have created a “Dell Openmanage for Linux” .deb package using the rpms supplied by Dell (thanks chaps). The main page is here:-
https://subtrac.sara.nl/oss/omsa_2_deb
Pre-requisites
Log into your server(s) and edit your sources.list (with help from http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2007-August/032488.html):-
# vim /etc/apt/sources.list
Add these lines to sources.list:-
### http://volatile.debian.net/debian-volatile/
deb http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile etch/volatile main contrib non-free
deb-src http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile etch/volatile main contrib non-free
### www.debian-unofficial.org
deb http://ftp.debian-unofficial.org/debian etch main contrib non-free restricted
deb-src http://ftp.debian-unofficial.org/debian etch main contrib non-free restricted
### www.backports.org
deb http://www.backports.org/debian etch-backports main contrib non-free
deb-src http://www.backports.org/debian etch-backports main contrib non-free
### Dell Monitoring
deb ftp://ftp.sara.nl/pub/sara-omsa dell sara
Now update your packages:-
# apt-get update
To verify your newly added debian.unofficial.org repository do the following (taken from http://debian-unofficial.org/faq.html):-
apt-get install debian-unofficial-archive-keyring
or
aptitude install debian-unofficial-archive-keyring
gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys 0xFDB8D39A
gpg --armor --export 0xFDB8D39A | apt-key add -
or
wget http://ftp-master.debian-unofficial.org/other/openpgp/archive-key-2008.asc -O - | apt-key add -
To verify your newly added backports.org repository do the following (taken from http://www.backports.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=instructions):-
apt-get install debian-backports-keyring
or
gpg --keyserver hkp://subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys 16BA136C
gpg --export | apt-key add -
or
wget -O - http://backports.org/debian/archive.key | apt-key add -
You will need to install Java and SNMP to get full functionality, to do this:-
# apt-get install sun-java6-jre
# apt-get install snmp snmpd openipmi lsb-base
SAS/5iR RAID Controllers
If you are running a machine with an SAS/5iR or similar RAID controller (like a PE860) you will need to take the following steps:-
Install mpt-status:-
# apt-get install mpt-status
Now make sure it loads correctly, this can be easily done via:-
# mpt-status --autoloadThe Dell OMSA should now be able to query the RAID controller.
Installation
Now install the package:-
# apt-get install dellomsa
The following packages will also get installed (if they are not already):-
gcc-3.3-base libbeecrypt6 libglib1.2 libglib2.0-0 libneon25
libopenipmi0 librpm4 libsensors3 libsnmp-base libsnmp9 libsqlite3-0
libstdc++5 libsysfs2 libxml2 openipmi rpmYou will get the following warning:-
WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated!
dellomsa
Install these packages without verification [y/N]?Just type y, hit return and trust that nothing nasty is gonna happen
You may encounter this error while installing (well, I did anyway):-
Unpacking dellomsa (from .../dellomsa_5.4.0-1_i386.deb) ...
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/dellomsa_5.4.0-1_i386.deb (--unpack):
failed in buffer_write(fd) (9, ret=-1): backend dpkg-deb during `./opt/dell/srvadmin/jre/lib/charsets.jar': No space left on device
dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe)
rm: cannot remove `/etc/ld.so.conf.d/dell-omsa.conf': No such file or directory
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/dellomsa_5.4.0-1_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)It is basically moaning about not having enough space, the package attempts to write to /opt so all I did to resolve this was to move /opt to a partition with more space and symlink it back like so:-
# cd /
# mv opt /home/
# ln -s /home/opt opt
Now just re-run the install command:-
# apt-get install dellomsa
Configuration
Web Management Interface:-
To install the Web Management interface follow these instructions (taken directly from https://subtrac.sara.nl/oss/omsa_2_deb/wiki/FAQ):-
The IWS webserver enables you to read the same information that the omreport command supplies in a nice web interface. You can start IWS from the /etc/init.d directory, currently we don’t support automatic startup.
Manually start the webserver:
/etc/init.d/dsm_om_connsvc start
To automatically start the webserver on boot:
/usr/sbin/update-rc.d dsm_om_connsvc start 20 2 3 4 5 . stop 19 0 1 6 . >/dev/null
You can login to the webserver using a local account on port 1311, for example:
Before you can log in to the WMI you need to edit /opt/dell/srvadmin/iws/config/iws.ini and make some changes:-
# vim /opt/dell/srvadmin/iws/config/iws.ini
Change username and password to something other than admin/admin. Now you will be able to login to the interface using your system root username and password (I know its all a bit odd but if/when I find an explanation I will update this section).
SNMP:-
First you need to configure /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf. The easiest way to do this is by running snmpconf from command line:-
# snmpconf
Make sure that you set a read/write community from your local network. When it has been written out you should get something like this (bear in mind I have removed all comments to keep it simple):-
syslocation Yourserverlocation
syscontact user@yourdomain.com rwcommunity yourcommunityname 192.168.0.0/24
com2sec readonly default yourcommunityname
com2sec readwrite default yourcommunityname
group MyROSystem v1 paranoid
group MyROSystem v2c paranoid
group MyROSystem usm paranoid
group MyROGroup v1 readonly
group MyROGroup v2c readonly
group MyROGroup usm readonly
group MyRWGroup v1 readwrite
group MyRWGroup v2c readwrite
group MyRWGroup usm readwrite
view all included .1 80
view system included .iso.org.dod.internet.mgmt.mib-2.system
access MyROSystem "" any noauth exact system none none
access MyROGroup "" any noauth exact all none none
access MyRWGroup "" any noauth exact all all none
smuxpeer .1.3.6.1.4.1.674.10892.1
To ensure that the OMSA SMUX works ok I found that I had to edit /etc/default/snmpd:-
# vim /etc/default/snmpd
And change SNMPDOPTS to look like this (thanks to the guys on this list http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-473880.html):-
SNMPDOPTS='-Lsd -Lf /dev/null -u snmp -p /var/run/snmpd.pid'Now restart the snmpd service:-
# /etc/init.d/snmpd restart
Now enable SNMP in OMSA:-
# /etc/init.d/dataeng enablesnmp
Restart OMSA
# /etc/init.d/dataeng restart
Testing:-
The easiest way to test this is to use snmpwalk:-
# snmpwalk -v 1 -OS -c yourcommunityname youripaddress .1.3.6.1.4.1.674.10892.1The .1.3.6.1.4.1.674.10892.1 OID refers to the Dell Openmanage MIBs.
Firewall
If you are running an iptables firewall on your Linux Debian box (which, lets face it, is usually a good idea), then you will need to open the following ports:-
SNMP: 161 TCP/UDP
OMSA Web interface: 1311 TCP
So using IPTABLES you can just add these entries into your firewall config file (which may or may not be /etc/rc.local), change 192.168.0.0/24 to reflect your network address range:-
#Allow incoming port 161 (tcp/udp) SNMP
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -s 10.100.0.0/24 --dport 161 -m state --state NEW -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p udp -s 10.100.0.0/24 --dport 161 -m state --state NEW -j ACCEPT
#Allow incoming port 1311 (tcp) Dell OpenManage Server Administrator
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -s 10.100.0.0/24 --dport 1311 -m state --state NEW -j ACCEPT
Nagios OMSA Integration
If you are also using Nagios then you can take advantage of several perl scripts that can query the Dell Hardware via SNMP.
The check script that I am currently using is check_omsa_snmp.pl. You may need to change a couple of paths in the script itself and you will also need Perl and Net-SNMP installing on your Nagios Server.
Then its just a case of creating some service checks for things like fans and power supplies!

Thanks! Works like a charm. I’ve finally managed to finally get my PE2550 health indicator back to ‘green’
TRG
[...] Eine gute Anleitung zum installieren von den OMSA-Tools gibt es unter http://www.ubergeek.co.uk/blog/2008/05/dell-openmanage-on-linux-debian/ [...]
Thanks for the article, I was stumped trying to find the service to restart for OM. For some reason my “racsrv” processes was spiked at 100% for a long period of time… restarting OM fixed the problem.
Thanks,
Cody
http://www.ticket-vault.com