Dell PowerEdge servers have implemented standards-based IPMI hardware monitoring on most of the server line. This table describes the specific implementations by platform.

1. may set OEM0 Data Available bit, needs kernel 2.6.14-rc1 or higher (driver 33.4 or higher) to resolve, or BMC firmware 1.40 or higher.
2. firmware doesn't respond to "Get SDR" commands if the length of the SDR = 0x41 bytes. Drivers released after 7-Oct-2005 resolves (35.10.RHEL3, 33.9.RHEL4, 36.4.SLES9).
3. driver must clear B2H_ATN flag after a timeout, needs kernel 2.6.14-rc5-mm1 or higher to resolve.
4. may set OEM0 Data Available bit, needs kernel 2.6.14-rc5-mm1 or higher to resolve.
5. needs kernel command line parameter pnpacpi=off on kernels 2.6.12 - 2.6.16; fixed in 2.6.17.

• On x8xx servers with 2.6.12 - 2.6.15 kernels, x86_64 architecture, ipmi_si can't automatically find the KCS interface to the controller. This is fixed in 2.6.16. Until then, put this into your /etc/modprobe.conf file:

  options ipmi_si type="kcs" ports="0xca8" regspacings="4"
  

• On PowerEdge 7250 Itanium2 servers, the IPMI driver does not autodetect the hardware, for reasons similar to that on x86_64. Put this in your /etc/modprobe.conf file:

  options ipmi_si ports=0x8a2
  

  This is fixed in 2.6.17.
• On Fedora Core 5, SLES10 i386 (not x86_64) Gold and kernels 2.4.12ish to kernels before 2.6.17-rc5-mm1, the pnpacpi layer may claim the I/O ports on behalf of the IPMI driver, but the IPMI driver doesn't know this. If modprobe ipmi_si fails because it can't allocate the I/O ports, this is your problem. You need fairly new (January 2006) BIOS on your x8xx, 1425SC, or x9xx server to see this.

  The workaround is to disable pnpacpi using the kernel command line parameter:

  pnpacpi=off
  

  This is fixed in 2.6.17-rc5-mm1 and in Linus's tree which will become 2.6.17.