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    2.2 and IPMI hardware watchdog

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Hardware
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    • M
      MikeDPitt
      last edited by

      I have 2.2 RC installed on an Intel SSD Pro 2500 120GB SSD, with trim enabled. Motherboard is a supermicro a1sam-2550f which has a nice hardware ipmi watchdog feature that will power cycle the board every 5 minutes, I haven't really found any documentation on 2.2 as to how to set this up, or if there is a package of some kind to install ichwd drivers or the IPMI drivers to send a signal to the hardware watchdog (or if that's even the correct direction I should move in to accomplish this). Any help would be greatly appreciated.
      I found this: https://knowledge.zomers.eu/pfsense/Pages/Configure-pfSense-2-0-RC1-to-use-Watchdog-functionality-Method2.aspx
      but I'm not sure if it applies to 2.2

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      • stephenw10S
        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
        last edited by

        There was a discussion of this a few days ago. The conclusion we came to was that support for the C2000 SoC has not made it into the ICHWD driver yet. It's hard to tell though because the Rangley Atoms are a System on Chip design, they have no separate ICH, so quite what needs to be supported is unknown (to me!). Maybe it's not intended to use the ICH driver at all.
        Using the IPMI method may work though, you'd have to check the support in that driver too.
        Be aware that neither of the described methods will survive a firmware update.

        https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=86169.0

        Steve

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        • M
          MikeDPitt
          last edited by

          Thanks for your quick reply. So it seems it should be better to just wait. Although I have seen a freeipmi package for BSD10 I don't know enough about how to go about installing it. Thanks for the info, I'll wait patiently. That can't be a feature other people aren't asking for as well.  ;D

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          • stephenw10S
            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
            last edited by

            You're running a full install so adding FreeBSD packages shouldn't be difficult. If you're willing to experiment then the instructions you linked to should mostly hold true. Obviously there will be some differences. Be prepared to re-install though because at some point you probably will break something.  ;)

            Steve

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            • M
              MikeDPitt
              last edited by

              I don't think I'm brave enough for all that tbh. It's running my office now, and doing a great job for what it needs to. I also noticed that pfSense doesn't seem to detect the IPMI shared LAN port as an interface, even though it's Intel. I think I may be better off just leaving it alone for now until it's more supported. Thanks for all you help again.

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              • M
                MikeDPitt
                last edited by

                are there plans to add this functionality ootb to pfsense anytime soon? I'm aware I can add a bounty, i was only curious as I'm sure more are excited about having a feature like an IPMI hearbeat and auto power cycling for problematic remote servers that lock occasionally.

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                • M
                  MikeDPitt
                  last edited by

                  trying to bump this thread to see if this has been included in the newest pfsense. It seemed to work with the above instructions as long as you added a driver, but was reported not working with 2.2. Which would mean that it's not supported in BSD 10? Is this the case?

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                  • stephenw10S
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                    last edited by

                    Do you recall what driver it was?

                    You could try a 2.3 snapshot if you're able to do that. Maybe try running it Live from a USB stick. That's built on FreeBSD 10.2-stable so it has newer drivers etc.
                    https://snapshots.pfsense.org/

                    Steve

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                    • M
                      MikeDPitt
                      last edited by

                      Seems it's being added in 2.3 for my board's chipset! Thanks again SO much! TBH, I would think this would be a very widely used feature for remote or rackmount in data center purposes. Thanks again!

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                      • stephenw10S
                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                        last edited by

                        Great. Good outcome.  :)

                        Steve

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