manipulating BMC users with ipmitool fails on Power 9 machine

[Erwin de Beus]

Trying to change passwords or usernames of BMC user with ipmitool fails on our new IBM Power9 machine with Ubuntu 18.04. It works fine on our older IBM Power8 machine with Ubuntu 16.04.

For example:

root@srv-03:~# ipmitool user list 1
IPMI command failed: Invalid command

On the Power8 machine this lists the users on the BMC.

Manipulating the LAN setting of the BMC using ipmitool works fine on both IBM machines.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: ipmitool 1.8.18-5ubuntu0.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-30.32-generic 4.15.18
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-30-generic ppc64le
NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.2
Architecture: ppc64el
Date: Tue Aug 7 22:43:14 2018
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-07-17 (21 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release ppc64el (20180426)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcLoadAvg: 0.17 0.41 0.44 1/1567 7715
ProcSwaps:
 Filename Type Size Used Priority
 /dev/md1 partition 29280192 0 -2
ProcVersion: Linux version 4.15.0-30-generic (buildd@bos02-ppc64el-011) (gcc version 7.3.0 (Ubuntu 7.3.0-16ubuntu3)) #32-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jul 26 17:43:11 UTC 2018
SourcePackage: ipmitool
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
VarLogDump_list: total 0
cpu_cores: Number of cores present = 32
cpu_coreson: Number of cores online = 32
cpu_smt: SMT=4

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

Hmm, might this be due to a specific issue on your BMC (config or FW level)?

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep machine
machine : PowerNV 9006-12C

$ sudo ipmitool user list 1
ID Name Callin Link Auth IPMI Msg Channel Priv Limit
1 true false false Unknown (0x00)
2 ADMIN false false true ADMINISTRATOR
3 maas true false true ADMINISTRATOR
4 true false false Unknown (0x00)
5 true false false Unknown (0x00)
6 true false false Unknown (0x00)
7 true false false Unknown (0x00)
8 true false false Unknown (0x00)
9 true false false Unknown (0x00)
10 true false false Unknown (0x00)

So it works fine for me on a P9 using ipmitool 1.8.18-5ubuntu0.1 from Bionic.

I'll ask to mirror this to IBM as well as it might be FW specific.

[Erwin de Beus (erwinde)]

I've also notified our local representative, just in case it is something with our machine

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for ipmitool (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for The Ubuntu-power-systems project because there has been no activity for 60 days.]