"This browser is not going to be able to log into the HP web-based management software..."

[Steve Kadish]

Hello,

Among all my Proliants, I have two whose System Management Homepages I cannot log into using a remote browser. I can only access them on the actual server console themselves.

If you try to access the homepage through a remote browser, Insight Manager 7, or SIM, I get the page which begins:

"This browser is not going to be able to log into the HP web-based management software on this system."

... which then makes several suggestions regarding cookies and the system date, none of which apply.

When trying to run a configuration task through SIM, I recieved the following result for these two servers:

"Could not contact the agents to initiate a secure session, the HP web agent(s) may be stopped, uninstalled, or downgraded."

All servers are running the 6.40 agents.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks very much,
- Steve Kadish

[David Claypool]

Is it possible that these two devices are located on the other side of a router or layer 3+ device that is blocking the 2381 port?

[Steve Kadish]

No; in fact they are on the same layer-2 switch as about six other servers managed by Insight Manager 7 which do not have this problem.

Thanks,
- Steve

[Scott Shaffer]

You might want to double check the date, time, and time zone on the servers in question - this is the most likely cause of this problem. I know you said it didn't apply, but I'd recommend making sure.

Otherwise, are there any messages in the event log from the agents on those systems?

Scott

[Steve Kadish]

Hi,

The time, date, and time zone are correct on both servers. I just double-checked them, but they are synchronizing with the SNTP server on our PDC anyway.

And no, I don't get any entries in the event logs.

Interestingly, I just realized that I can get to the servers if I use the IP address instead of the server name, which I had not thought to try before. Is there any chance that the Insight Manager web server has a problem with server names which contain an underscore? These two servers are the only ones which do (and don't blame me, they were named before my time).

Thanks,
- Steve

[David Savlin · Accepted solution]

I've found that MS Internet Explorer does not correctly handle cookies when the site URL contains an underscore in the machine name. Unfortunately, this stabbed me in the back as our entire NT4 network uses system names with prefixes separated by an underscore (!). Our solution was to start migrating towards using dashes ("-") instead of underscores ("_"). Here, too, we could use the IP address instead of the server name, and connect in fine.

My solution was to remove all our servers from the IM7 database and re-add them using a HOSTS file, using alias to put dashes in the name. I also created CNAME aliases on our internal DNS server to back this up.

https://nt_newyork would fail, but
https://nt-newyork would work.

Took me forever to find this solution :-(

[David Claypool]

Confirmed! MS Knowledge Base article:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=316112

[Steve Kadish]

Thanks, guys! What a pain! We don't have an internal DNS server yet - I can put static entries in our WINS database, but that's about it. I did try deleting the servers from Systems Insight Manager and adding them using a Hosts file, but even though I used "-" instead of "_" in the Hosts file, they still show up in Systems Insight Manager with the underscore.

These two servers are both being replaced next year, and when I build the new ones I will make sure that they have proper names!

- Steve