No dots in iLO name

[Robert Schüttler]

The fundamental problem is that the iLO subsystem name isn't allowed to contain "." (i.e. you are allowed to call it "ilo4myserver" but not "ilo4myserver.example.org") _and_ that the cerificate signing request contains the iLO subsystem name. This means that if you need to connect to your iLO via https and use the fully qualified name (https://ilo4myserver.example.org) it will never match the name in the certificate (ilo4myserver).

[Mike DiBenedetto]

We had the same issue that you are experiencing. We needed to download and use the Lights Out Configuration utility. The link is:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=1121516&swItem=MTX-232d69dde5874c11b3ebc27ee3&prodNameId=3288134&swEnvOID=1005&swLang=8&taskId=135&mode=4&idx=1

It is a set of xml scripts where you can set the parameters like an answer file and then run them against the iLo.

This worked for us, but caused other issues. For one, once you set the name with this utility, you cannot use the web interface to change any settings on that screen where the iLo name is configured, because the web interface will complain about the '.' (even though it's already there). Lastly, we have our DHCP server appending our domain suffix, and since the iLo name has the suffix defined to get the cert correct, we see hostname.fqdn.com.fqdn.com for example. I think we can fix this in our DHCP configuration, but I still can't understand why HP will not fix this so that the configuration can be done in the web interface.

[Ben Short]

Yep,
This is a problem we have as well. We are actually chasing this through our support channels to try and get HP to fix it in a future firmware release.
The information we got back was "Well nobody asked us to do this, so we havent done it"

*sigh*

[Robert Schüttler]

Cool. If you tell us your case-ID we can try to make calls for our servers via HPRC mentioning it. Maybe then HP will give it a higher priority and really issue a fix soon. But at least they won't say that nobody ever complained about it. ;-)

[Ben Short]

I'd love to give you a case ID, but our account manager is being coy about giving it to me, saying it's an "Internal" HP Support Ticket, and that it has been escalated with HP Australia Management

[Ben Short]

Just as an update:
Have been advised by our A/C Manager that the iLO team have been made aware of the issue and are actively working on it..

[jgreco]

There's a simple workaround iff you're willing to use the web interface.

A very common mistake in Web programming is to rely exclusively on JavaScript for input sanity checking. One of the basic things we do when testing web site code is to see whether the errors trapped by JavaScript are trapped when the form is submitted regardless; good code on the server side will catch the same errors and will reject the submission, although it probably has to be handled differently.

Occasionally, we'll run across something really strange such as the CSR issue mentioned above. Since we use a local CA and root cert, we really like to be able to install a cert we issue. It was a pretty obvious thing to try turning off JavaScript, since it was a JS error popping up. Appears to work just fine if you do that. Turn it back on after you submit the form and leave the page.