OpenManage in Linux

There are different versions of Open Manager for each OS, but you can find the documentation here:

http://premiersupport.dell.com/docs/software/svradmin/

OpenManage stuff on Linux is a little bit of a "hit and miss" affair - it seems that some things are either only implemented on the Windows version or they don't work properly on the Linux version. For example, although I configured in my e-mail address and SMTP server into the OpenManage Server Administrator, I've yet find out how you get OMSA to actually *send* you an e-mail alert when there's a server problem (from reading other posts, apparently OMSA on its own can't, which begs the question why the e-mail info is needed by OMSA in the first place !).

The latest issue is that OMSA 1.7 screws up your load average by 1 (so a 100% idle machine has a load average of 1.00, which is ludicrous and a seriously misleading bug in the 1.7 release), so you might want to load at OMSA 1.5 or 1.6 (plus the security patch that you seem to need for all the OMSA 1.X releases) instead. Oh and don't forget that Dell have also dragged their heels on kernel 2.6 support with OMSA, so we're all hoping that the 1.8 (or 2.0 or whatever the next one is) release will have 2.6 support, especially since Fedora Core 2 is out with the 2.6.5 kernel next Tuesday!!

Anyway, the only reason I install OMSA isn't for the Web interface (cos who checks that regularly and it can't bleeding send e-mail alerts either - aaaargh !), it's for the one and only truly useful feature - the "Auto Recovery" system, which can auto-reboot your system after so many seconds of the system hanging (it does it with independent watchdog hardware that has a timer that is constantly reset by a process - when the process hangs, the timer cascades to zero and the machine is independently rebooted - very useful indeed and has saved our bacon once already when a Red Hat 8.0 kernel hung on us over the weekend).

Go and look on Dell's FTP server for the om*.tar.gz files (om35 = OMSA 1.5, om36 = OMSA 1.6, om37 = the Saddam Hussein of OMSA's [1.7]) and the security patch for all OMSA 1.X releases.

 

I noticed OMSA 1.8 came out a few days ago... FYI...

 

 

Just had a look at OMSA 1.8 (om38_lnx_managed_systemA00.tar.gz on the FTP server) and a couple of things make me way too nervous to install it. Firstly, they've accidentally left out the "readme" subdir from the .tar.gz file, containing all the important docs on installing the software - oops! This can be confirmed by loading up dell/omsw/app/doc/en/readme/index.htm from the unpacked tree and watch every single documentation link be broken...ho hum.

The second issue is that the rather terse release notes in dell/omsw/app/doc/en/releasenotes/relnote.htm seem to suggest that the fatal crash problem I've encountered muliple times with OMSA 1.7 plus the "load average of 1.00 when 100% idle" both haven't been fixed (unless the "new internal Data Engine component" [er, what's that?] fixes this). Also, not a word about whether kernel 2.6.X is supported yet :-(

To quote from the mailing list: "The latest OM v1.8 has solved [the watchdog bug] along with the load average problem."

So you're good to roll.

You must remember that the readmes are supposed to be on a CD. This is a partial package created for your convinience.

-Mike