1. om420_nw_managed_system_A00.exe Driver
2. readme_bmc.txt File Contents

readme_bmc.txt Driver File Contents (om420_nw_managed_system_A00.exe)

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DELL OPENMANAGE(TM) BASEBOARD MANAGEMENT CONTROLLER 
MANAGEMENT UTILITY VERSION 1.0.1 README

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NOTE: This readme provides information about the Dell OpenManage 
Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) Management Utility version 1.0.1.

NOTE: See the Dell OpenManage(TM) Server Administrator readme (readme.txt) 
      on the "Systems Management and Documentation" CD for the latest  
      information and issues specifically related to Server 
      Administrator.

NOTE: See the Dell OpenManage 4.0.1 installation readme (readme_ins.txt) 
      on the "Systems Management" CD for the latest installation 
      information and issues specifically related to Server 
      Administrator. 

This file contains the following sections: 

* Criticality

* User Notes 

* Known Issues


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CRITICALITY
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3 - Optional

Optional = Dell recommends that you review the specifics about the
update to determine if it applies to your system. The update contains
changes that impact only certain configurations, or provides new features
that may/may not apply to your environment.

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USER NOTES
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This section provides information to help enhance your experience with
your systems management software in particular implementations and 
environments.

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NOTES FOR THE BASEBOARD MANAGEMENT CONTROLLER (BMC) MANAGEMENT UTILITY
======================================================================

* SOL Proxy on IP port 623 allows connections from a Web browser. 
  However, if you connect from a Web browser, SOL Proxy displays 
  only jumbled and unusable data. You must close the Web session 
  and connect through a telnet connection to run the application. 
  
* Only one telnet session at a time can be connected to the SOL Proxy 
  service.
	 
* Make sure you have assigned a valid BMC username and password before 
  you connect to your system's BMC using the BMC Management Utility.

  Even though your system's BMC firmware does not allow null usernames 
  or null passwords to be set, the BMC Management Utility does not limit 
  this functionality. If you do not explicitly provide a valid BMC 
  username and password when using the BMC Management Utility to log in 
  to your system's BMC, the BMC firmware will use a null username and 
  null password as defaults, resulting in a "Login Not Authorized" 
  error. The default username and password values for the BMC are 
  username: root, password: calvin.

* You must connect to the SOL Proxy Server (the system on which the BMC 
  Management Utility is installed), before you can use the SOL Proxy to 
  connect to a managed system's BMC.

* During normal use of the SOL Proxy utility, the SOL session can 
  unexpectedly disconnect when it receives an out-of-sequence packet. The 
  following error is displayed:
  
    Out of sequence SOL data received.

    SOL session closed due to data loss.

    Deactivating ............

    Deactivated  successfully 
 
  The system is most likely to receive out-of-sequence packets
  immediately after the system is rebooted.


* For optimal SOL Proxy performance, use the default "Character 
  Accumulate Interval" and "Character Send Threshold" values. The 
  default settings for these two parameters are 30 ms and 220 
  characters, respectively.

  You can set these two parameters in Server Administrator by 
  clicking "Advanced Settings" on the "Serial-Over-LAN" page for 
  the BMC object.

  If you change these values to lower values, the console redirection 
  feature of SOL Proxy may experience a reduction in performance. 
  For example, if the "Character Send Threshold" value is reduced 
  to 10 characters, only 10 characters are being redirected each 
  time a packet is sent. Furthermore, SOL Proxy has to wait to receive 
  an acknowledgement for each packet before sending the next packet. 
  As a result, the performance is significantly reduced.

  The "Character Accumulate Interval" value is the typical amount of 
  time the BMC waits before sending a partial SOL data packet. This 
  parameter is specified in milli-seconds. 

  The "Character Send Threshold" value specifies the number of 
  characters per SOL data packet. As soon as the number of characters 
  accepted by the Baseboard Serial Controller into the Baseboard 
  Management Controller is determined to be equal or greater 
  than the "Character Send Threshold" value, the BMC starts transmitting 
  SOL data packets (where each SOL data packet contains this many 
  characters or less). If a packet contains less characters than this 
  value, then it is defined to be a partial SOL data packet.

* The intended usage model for the SOL Proxy is the following:
  
  Telnet Client <----> WAN Connection <----> SOL Proxy <----> BMC Server

  When the SOL Proxy communicates with the telnet client on a management 
  station, it uses the TCP/IP protocol. However, SOL Proxy communicates 
  with the managed system's BMC over the RMCP/IPMI/SOL protocol, which 
  is a UDP-based protocol. Therefore, if you communicate with your 
  managed system's BMC from SOL Proxy over a WAN connection, you may 
  experience network performance issues such as connection timeouts. 

  It was noted in a test environment that while performing console 
  redirection over a WAN simulator where the WAN connection was between 
  the SOL Proxy and BMC, a 10% packet loss rate led to several network 
  errors, such as connection timeouts and authentication errors. However, 
  when the packet loss rate was reduced to 5%, the SOL Proxy did not run 
  into any network issues.

  However, the recommended usage model is to have the SOL Proxy and the  
  BMC Server on the same LAN network. The management station with the 
  telnet client can then connect to the SOL Proxy over a WAN connection. 
  In this usage model, SOL Proxy will function as desired.

* When you initiate a console redirection session using SOL Proxy while
  loading the Microsoft Windows operating system, you may not be able 
  to send data to the serial port. Because Windows can block the writing 
  of data to the serial port, you might receive the following message when 
  you attempt to send data using keyboard input:

  "SOL not able to write to the system serial port."

  The SOL session closes after displaying this message. You are then 
  directed to the main SOL menu.

* You can manage a system by accessing multiple IPMI instances at the 
  same time as long as your system's BMC supports more than one 
  concurrent connection. However, multiple sessions can lead to 
  session failures under high network traffic.

* When attempting to gracefully power off a system running NetWare or 
  Red Hat Linux via SOL Proxy, you can sometimes receive a message 
  stating that the system is unable to power off the server because the 
  "power_off_timeout" was reached. The "power_off_timeout" value specifies 
  the time in seconds that SOL Proxy polls for the managed system's power 
  status and is set to a default value of 60 seconds. If your managed system 
  is running a supported NetWare or Red Hat Linux operating system, it may 
  take longer than 60 seconds for the operating system to complete the 
  graceful shutdown. You can avoid this circumstance by modifying the 
  "power_off_timeout" parameter in the solproxy.cfg file to a larger value, 
  such as 90 seconds. 


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KNOWN ISSUES
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This section provides information about open issues with your systems 
management software.

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ISSUES FOR THE BMC MANAGEMENT UTILITY
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* The SOL Proxy service does not auto-start after installation. 

  To start the SOL Proxy service after installation, you can either 
  reboot the system (SOL Proxy automatically starts on a reboot), or 
  manually start the service. See below for instructions on starting 
  the SOL Proxy service on systems running Windows. See the "Baseboard 
  Management Controller User's Guide" for more information about 
  manually starting the SOL Proxy service on systems running Red Hat 
  Linux. The "Baseboard Management Controller User's Guide" is
  available on the Dell Support website at "support.dell.com" or on
  the "Documentation" CD that came with your system.

* The instructions in the "Baseboard Management Controller User's Guide"
  for starting the SOL Proxy service on systems running a supported Windows 
  operating system are not correct. To start the SOL Proxy service on 
  systems running Windows, perform the following steps:

  1. Right-click "My Computer" and then click "Manage." 

     The "Computer Management" window appears.

  2. Click "Services and Applications" and then click "Services". 
    
     The available services appear in the right frame of the window.

  3. Find "SOL Proxy" in the list of services and right-click on it to 
     start or stop the service.


* After IPMI Shell is installed, if you open a command prompt and type 
  "ipmish" without being in the "c:\program files\dell\openmanage\
  bmcconsole" directory you will get an error saying that the command 
  could not be found. This is because by default, the IPMISH directory 
  is not added to the system path. You must either manually add the 
  system path to the command line, or go to the specified directory 
  before running the IPMISH application.

* The default installation path for the SOL Proxy service on systems 
  running Windows is incorrectly documented in the "Baseboard Management 
  Controller User's Guide." The default installation path for the 
  SOL Proxy service on systems running Windows is:

  C:\program files\dell\openmanage\bmcconsole

* Microsoft(R) SAC does not implement hardware control flow. Therefore, 
  when console redirection is enabled with EMS SAC, you will see 
  corrupted data. Because SAC does not implement hardware flow control,
  you will not be able to effectively use SOL Proxy to activate console 
  redirection to EMS SAC.

* While performing console redirection via SOL Proxy, the screen may 
  appear to have a few garbled characters. This can occur while
  the SOL Proxy refreshes the screen. 

  You can verify your redirected output by using the same telnet client 
  over the serial port to ensure that your telnet client supports console 
  redirection features. If you see the same garbled text via the serial 
  port, you may want to use another telnet client to get better 
  performance.

* If you issue the graceful shutdown command using SOL Proxy option 4 
  (Reboot and Activate Console Redirection) on a system running Microsoft 
  Windows 2000 with a ACPI-compliant BIOS, Windows performs an emergency 
  shutdown instead of a graceful shutdown. Windows does not send 
  WM_QUERYENDSESSION and WM_ENDSESSION messages to the running programs; 
  therefore, the programs cannot notify the user to save data and quit 
  gracefully. This could result in data corruption or data loss. See the 
  following link for more information:

  http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;297150 


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Information in this document is subject to change without notice.
(C) 2004 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.

Reproduction in any manner whatsoever without the written permission 
of Dell Inc. is strictly forbidden.

Trademarks used in this text: "Dell", "PowerEdge", and 
"Dell OpenManage" are trademarks of Dell Inc.; "Microsoft" and 
"Windows" are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation; 
"Red Hat" is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc.

Server Administrator uses the OverLIB JavaScript library. This 
library can be obtained from "www.bosrup.com".

Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer 
to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their products.  
Dell Inc. disclaims any proprietary interest in 
trademarks and trade names other than its own.

July 2004