ilo keyboard character set

[Donna Piller]

Hello,

We have this problem with the keyboard characters while remotely accessing a machine through ilo. Whenever we type on the keyboard we don't get the right characters we want and instead, we get unknown characters like that of a language with different alphabet that can't be properly displayed by the machine. The numbers are also out of place. Could this be keyboard configuration settings problem?
Any help will be much appreciated!

[acartes]

Check the iLO Global Settings - Remote Keyboard model. It should be consistent with the keyboard that the remote server expects to be connected.

[Donna Piller]

Acartes thanks for the post.

I logged in to ilo and chose Global Settings on the left menu but the only thing i could see for keyboard settings is choosing wether to enable or disable Host keyboard. There is no other option for configuring or getting info about keyboard setting i could find.

[Donna Piller]

I got the following details from server information -> status:

Server Keyboard Type: US
Remote Insight Keyboard Cable: Disconnected
Remote Insight Firmware Version: 08/27/2001

POST Diagnostic Results
Keyboard Tests: Passed

I tried a remote login to ilo from another machine and i didn't get the weird character display but still the numbers are out of place. I have to guess where are the special characters and the numbers.

Thanks in advance!

[acartes]

I recommend first updating the firmware on that board. You can download it here:

http://h18013.www1.hp.com/support/files/lights-out/us/index.html

Select product and host OS and then get the online ROM flash component. Alternatively, you can extract the image and update the firmware using the browser interface.

Are you using a RILOE, RILOE II or iLO? The settings you indicate do not sound like iLO settings...

[Donna Piller]

I recommend first updating the firmware on that board. You can download it here:

http://h18013.www1.hp.com/support/files/lights-out/us/index.html

Select product and host OS and then get the online ROM flash component. Alternatively, you can extract the image and update the firmware using the browser interface.

Are you using a RILOE, RILOE II or iLO? The settings you indicate do not sound like iLO settings...

I logged into the configuration menu through F8 and you're right, it's not an iLO but RILOE.

From the International Settings menu i found out the following:
Keyboard Model=US
Language=English

Seems ok to me. Anyway, I will update our firmware and let you know more later.

Thanks,
Donna

[Donna Piller]

Hello,

On choosing the right firmware , I chose RILOE on product category, but our OS RH Enterprise Linux 3 is not listed on the OS category. I chose RHEL 2 but there is no 'Online ROM Flash Component...' listed.

I also tried locating the firmware through first giving the OS and then category. I got 'Online ROM Flash Components but only for iLO and RILOE II. Which one should I download then?

Thanks!

[acartes]

I don't see any RILOE firmware image support for Linux. You should download the latest component for Windows. You can extract the firmware image file from the component and then install it by logging into RILOE via the browser and performing the update there.

This is kind of a hassle for a linux environment. I think that RILOE was retired before Linux support was prevalent.

[Donna Piller]

Hello acartes,

The only 'Online ROM Flash Component..' I saw is for HP iLO and none for RILOE but i found 'RILOE Firmware'. Which then should i choose?

Thanks again!

[acartes]

It has been awhile, so I went through the process to extract the RILOE firmware:

1) download the ROMPAQ diskettes component
2) run the component and extract the floppy images.
3) intall floppy 2. This contains a compressed firmware image.
4) decompress the firmware on the floppy. The syntax loks like this:
c:\>a:\rompaq /D cpqc0001.84A c:\cpqrb253.bin

5) You will now have a file called CPQRB253.BIN. This can be flashed via the web interface.

I took the liberty of attaching this file ZIPPed to this message. You may want to go through the exercise yourself.

[acartes]

Also, verify that RILOE is correctly connected. There are two options:

Option 1: an internal ribbon cable "RILOE" between the system board and the RILOE adapter.

Option 2: an external "Y" cable that connects to keyboard+mouse, RILOE, and the keyboard+mouse ports on the host.

Only one is required. Make sure this is fully seated if installed.

[Donna Piller]

Hello,

I checked it again today if the numbers will be properly displayed and yup it's working! The problem is im not exactly sure how it worked. After the firmware upgrade i restarted the machine and tried the numbers and it was not displaying properly as before. It was last week and today i tried it again and to my surprise it's working. We have other machines with has the same problem and we have to plan a downtime for those machines if a reset is necessary. That's why my question, is it necessary to reboot the machine every after RILOE firmware upgrade?
I have another machine which has the same problem and it has an iLO board instead of RILOE. I upgraded today the firmware and restarted it afterwards but the problem was not fixed. Do you know perhaps if there's something else i can do?

Thanks again in advance.
Donna

[acartes]

>> is it necessary to reboot the machine every after RILOE firmware upgrade?

Most definitely, NO! You should be able to update the firmware without affecting the state of the host OS. A main principle is that out of band management should not affect the host OS.

As for the iLO situation, that is weird. Are you sure that the problem is not with the client system you are using, instead of the remote board? Is there an international keyboard attached? iLO default keyboard behavior is United States.

[Donna Piller]

>>As for the iLO situation, that is weird. Are you sure that the problem is not with the client system you are using, instead of the remote board? Is there an international keyboard attached? iLO default keyboard behavior is United States.

-There is no keyboard attached on the server itself. On the client systems we're using international keyboard (azerty). But i think it's not a problem if we're using azerty keyboard cause the letter keys are displaying properly, only the numbers and symbols not.
-These are the settings i found regarding our iLO:
Character set= 437:US
Remote Keyboard Model= US
Server Keyboard= 102-key compatible
-I restarted this server after the iLO firmware upgrade was done, that is after i got the login page again. Could the reboot have any affect on the board since you said i should have not rebooted the system? I checked the iLO status and the firmware was successfully upgraded and iLO self test status says Passed.

Thanks a lot!