iLO virtual media device names under linux

[Jason Brooke]

I'm wondering if anyone knows what the device names are for the virtual floppy and virtual cdrom so I can mount them under slackware or redhat. I'm using iLO 1.50 on a dl380 g3.

When you enable these virtual mediums, are the real floppy/cdrom in the server disabled, or do the virtual devices act as secondary devices alongside them?

Thanks

[Yong_7 · Accepted solution]

Hi,

please check it out here for more details:

http://h18013.www1.hp.com/products/servers/management/ilo/documentation.html

I do NOT think the real one will be disabled with the usage of virtual medium.

Cheers !

YJ

[Alvaro Miranda Aguilera]

Hi,

can you find them on the dmesg?

à lvar

[Jason Brooke]

thanks for the replies.

dmesg reports:

=====================================
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
hda: COMPAQ CD-ROM SN-124, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
=====================================

I can't determine via the BIOS information whether this is the built-in cdrom or the iLO virtual media, I suspect it's the built-in cdrom though. Regardless, I can't mount the iLO virtual media by way of /dev/hda because the following occurs:

=====================================
[root@host path]# mount /dev/hda /mnt/cdrom
mount: /dev/hda is not a valid block device


[root@host path]# mount -t iso9660 /dev/hda /mnt/cdrom
mount: /dev/hda is not a valid block device

ls -la /dev/hda
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 3, 0 Jan 30 2003 /dev/hda

ls -la /dev/cdrom
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 May 20 12:11 /dev/cdrom -> /dev/hda
=====================================

When I installed redhat on this machine, I was able to boot from the iLO virtual media (cdrom) no problem, but the redhat setup program was unable to find a cdrom to install from so I had to do an ftp install. Similarly, slackware and fedora cannot find cdrom install media after booting off the cdrom.

I'm accessing the iLO via another dl380 with win2003 installed in the same rack. The windows box has a literal cd in it's physical cdrom which I've used as the virtual media, as well as various linux iso's on it's harddisk which I've mounted with daemontools and offered as virtual media via the iLO. A windows install via iLO virtual media works without a hitch, the windows setup program doesn't have any problem finding the virtual cd media and completing an install. Linux though, doesn't seem to be able to detect the device after booting from the virtual cd media.

[Jason Brooke]

The documentation Yong pointed me to contains all the information I needed, I should've checked it more thoroughly first.

Specifically, the virtual media requires usb drivers be loaded by the operating system before being accessed after boot time. In my case, I needed to load scsi_mod.ko and usb_storage.ko (linux kernel 2.6.6)

thanks

[Jason Brooke]

I also needed sr_mod.ko

the virtual media cdrom was then accessible via /dev/scd0 as stated in the documentation

[barnett chan]

Make sure your USB Drivers are installed. (usbcore, usb-storage, ohci-hcd, sr_mod)iLO's Virtual Media simulates USB drives.

[Al Wilson_2]

I started a virtual device connection to a Linux box and mapped it to a folder on my PC.

I saw messages in the console that I interpret as a mount.

I want to copy files over, but I am having trouble understanding what the mount name is.

Can someone give me advice?

 See attachment.

[Matti_Kurkela]

The messages in the attachment indicate that a virtual media device has been detected by the Linux kernel and presented to userspace as /dev/sda (and /dev/sg0 in case you need raw SCSI access, which is unlikely in this case). This does not imply mounting any filesystem at all.

When mounting a filesystem, if the appropriate filesystem driver module is already loaded and there are no errors, there are often no kernel/console messages at all. Here are some reasons why you might see a kernel message on filesystem mount:

• a filesystem driver module was auto-loaded and it is outputting its version number or other information as a kernel message as the module is being loaded
• a filesystem is corrupted or not the expected type
• a filesystem type was not specified neither on the mount command line nor in /etc/fstab, or it was specified as "auto" or a list of filesystem types to try: in this case, the kernel will attempt to mount the filesystem using all the listed/already-loaded filesystem modules until it either runs out of filesystem types to try or the mount is successful. (Each incorrect guess may provoke a kernel message from the respective filesystem driver module, so this kind of autodetection can be quite "noisy".)

Your virtual device does not have any partitions on it, so you might be able to mount it with a simple

mount /dev/sda /mnt