OpenManage Enterprise SSH Access

I have a ticket open with Dell support. So far, it seems that enabling Field Service Debugging mode will enable SSH. However, only DELL engineers can provide the dat.ini and ssh key to access the appliance this way. And even then, the engineer has to stay on the phone whilst the scan/shell work is being performed.

To me, this is a completely backward way of gaining this access. No wonder the appliance is "free", since you'll need Dell support to even troubleshoot the thing.

Not happy with this at all. How is Dell expecting government agencies to use this? On blind faith and consistent hand holding?

I would be very grateful to be corrected in this line of thinking.

FYI Wanted to give you Kudos for your comment, however that is not working using Firefox it seems.

So... this appliance isn't difficult to crack open... here's what I did:

1) Power off the appliance.

2) Add a CD/DVD virtual device.

3) Mount up basically any linux installer or system rescue ISO.

4) Boot into that... get a shell...

5) Activate the root vg... 

6) Mount up the obvious root lv

7) chroot into it... 

8 ) Enable root logins in /etc/ssh/sshd_config

9) Enable sshd via: systemctl enable sshd

10) Set a temporary password for root via passwd

11) Exit the chroot and the installer/rescue image... let it boot back into OME

12) Cache your ssh key in root's keystore via whatever method you like... my preferred is ssh-copy-id

13) Remove root's temporary password...

14) ...

15) Profit!

There are lots of things that can be done to change this workflow... using a non-root user... setting up sudo... whatever you like.

In practice, some problems occurred when i try to enable OpenManage SSH Service.I don't understand what you say Boot into that... get a shell...

Well I just came across this thread, and for a matter of clarification I'll try to address @JackRose question:

I don't understand what you say Boot into that... get a shell...

Before booting, @Sidrew suggests you get a Live CD/DVD.

That is what you're going to boot. Into a live CD/DVD or its image.

Since OME is based on SUSE Enterprise Linux, get a copy of it. It can be the whole install DVD, doesn't matter.

Wherever you're running the appliance, plug the DVD and change the boot order to boot from the CD.

If using SLES, go to other options and select "RESCUE MODE" and wait.

There, you just booted (into that) and got a shell.

Next step is to get from the rescue system to the appliance system.

That you do with `chroot`. The internet search engines are your friends, but it's a simple process:

Mount the drive

Since it's LVM you'll see the volumes at

/dev/mapper

so its eg.

mount /dev/mapper/lvm-root /mnt

and bind `dev`, `sys`, `run` and `proc` can do like

for i in dev run proc sys ; do mount -o bind /$i /mnt/$i ; done

then just

chroot /mnt