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25674
November 29th, 2005 04:00
DRAC4 VNC "console redirection" questions
Does anyone else find the DRAC4's VNC "console redirection" feature... erm... "quirky"?
I've had this Poweredge 2800 a few days now and I definitely had the console redirect working the other day, although it took ages to load up. Today I don't seem to be having any joy at all: the Java window opens up with the appropriate buttons at the bottom, in the status bar I see "connecting to 192.168.0.120:5,900", but nothing further happens & the screen just stays black.
I've tried this from a more than one machine, all of which have the Sun Java runtime installed. Some also have Microsoft's Java VM, which is needed for a proprietary app used by the client.
Ideally I'd like to connect using a regular VNC viewer client - does anyone know if this is possible? It would be great if I could VNC into the DRAC4 from my Apple Mac laptop.
If I port-scan from my laptop I can see that "5900/tcp vnc" is open, but I just get timeouts when I try to connect with a couple of different VNC viewers.
Any advice gratefully received,
Andy.
I've had this Poweredge 2800 a few days now and I definitely had the console redirect working the other day, although it took ages to load up. Today I don't seem to be having any joy at all: the Java window opens up with the appropriate buttons at the bottom, in the status bar I see "connecting to 192.168.0.120:5,900", but nothing further happens & the screen just stays black.
I've tried this from a more than one machine, all of which have the Sun Java runtime installed. Some also have Microsoft's Java VM, which is needed for a proprietary app used by the client.
Ideally I'd like to connect using a regular VNC viewer client - does anyone know if this is possible? It would be great if I could VNC into the DRAC4 from my Apple Mac laptop.
If I port-scan from my laptop I can see that "5900/tcp vnc" is open, but I just get timeouts when I try to connect with a couple of different VNC viewers.
Any advice gratefully received,
Andy.
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NetworkNed
12 Posts
0
November 29th, 2005 04:00
Just ssh'd in and run `racadm racreset` and it's working now. I'd really like to be able to connect with a regular VNC client, tho'.
aB.
cnbank
3 Posts
0
November 30th, 2005 00:00
NetworkNed
12 Posts
0
November 30th, 2005 04:00
You can download Putty, a Windows SSH client, from the author's website at http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html
Ignore PuttyTel, PSCP and all the others - just run Putty.exe, put in the IP address of the DRAC and give the username/password (goes without saying that this shouldn't be root/calvin if the interface is exposed to the internet). You'll get a terminal prompt at which I think `help` or `?` gives a full list of commands.
`racadm racreset` (without the quotes) seems to reboot the DRAC4, but not the server; it seems to take a minute for the DRAC to restart. After I ran this last night I was able to "console redirect" in repeatedly from different machines, and even from 2 machines at once.
However I am still finding the DRAC4 moody - this morning (embarrassingly back on site for customer training, of course) I had more problems. Initially I was able to get the DRAC's webpage but the Java applet would not load, then after disconnecting the power from the server I couldn't even SSH in or ping the DRAC even once the server was fully up again! I definitely have been able to do what you want, entering the RAID setup screens using CTRL-D during the boot process, but it seems only to be when I've rebooted the system, not from a cold start.
Furthermore if the console is displaying the Windows login screensaver, which jumps around the screen saying "press ctrl-alt-del to logon" the DRAC4's screen seems very consistently to go corrupt, and I am often unable to send the keystrokes using the button at the bottom of the screen; if I can do so then I can see that the login prompt is present but the username & password fields are too blurry for me to see what I'm entering.
The DRAC4 sounds great on paper: I ordered it thinking "Blimey! I'll be able to reinstall this server from the other side of the Atlantic" but experience suggests that I probably wouldn't be able to do so without spending an hour or so on the phone to the client or the co-location host getting them to faff-about & power-cycle the host. I'm running version 1.33 of the DRAC firmware (the latest version I think), so hope that future updates may improve it.
Andy.
cnbank
3 Posts
0
November 30th, 2005 23:00
Andy,
Thank you for your patient explaination. I downloaded putty from the website you'd offered me. But when I tried to connect to my server by giving the server IP, putty returned "connection refused". I attempted some times only got the same results. My DRAC4's firmware version is 1.20, rather old, I think maybe It does not allow ssh at all.
I've called Dell for help. After I told the supporter what had happened to my server, he estimated that there might be hardware wrong with the DRAC card hence he would send someone to replace the card with a new one.
I'm now working in Northeast China, however, the server is in South China, tens of hundreds kilometres away from me, maybe like from N.Y to L.A. in the US I think. I can't go to see it myself. So I hope dell engineer could take care of it.
NetworkNed
12 Posts
0
December 1st, 2005 00:00
I guess you're connecting to the DRAC's IP, not the server's IP... but since you've got the console redirection webpage already I'm sure you must be. I had the "connection refused" problem, too, and wish I could believe that my problems were a fault with my DRAC4... it's brand new but seems so unreliable... maybe I'll give Dell a call at the weekend.
aB.