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This post chronicles my adventures trying to get a DRAC II card operational on my poweredge 4300 server running CentOS 5. This post also applies to most other linux distros, especially redhat-based distros. I will also document setting up remote access of the DRAC II card using a remote linux console on WAN.
First off, install your DRAC card in the server, before going any further. Hook up a cat3/5/6/7 up to it for good measure as well, and get it on your network. Done? Good. Now comes the fun part.
Boot up your system, then hop over to this page on Dell’s site to download the drivers and utilities for your DRAC II card. Unzip the file somewhere on your filesystem, and cd into the rpm directory. You should see 4 RPM files. You need to install the rpm corresponding to the kernel you use (most users will want the “UP” rpm, for standard kernel, EP is Enterprise Kernel, SMP is the SMP kernel).
To make this process a bit less painful (maybe), use yum localinstall <DRAC-RH70-XX-2.3.2-X.X.rpm to install the driver package you need. (Note: don’t install the “Common” RPM yet)
Now, type yum localinstall DRAC-RH70-Common-2.3.2-2.i386.rpm to install the utilities package.
As of this point, both of these commands will probably fail miserably on a more modern system (e.g., CentOS 5) due to missing dependencies. Fixing this is extremely hard, because the software wants ucd-snmp, which has been renamed to net-snmp as of late. “module-info” is also reported unresolvable and should be present on the system. Any ideas on how to fix these? Check out the comments. I will post a workaround once I learn of one.
Until then…
Ethan is a computer engineer and open source hardware/software developer from Michigan. He enjoys AVR and linux development, photography, mountain biking, and drinking significant amounts of home-roasted coffee. Find out more at ethanzonca.com.
It seems like it’s a tutorial on how to do it and then it becomes a question on how to do it – this should go on a Forum
Thanks for the feedback–I was planning on completing the post, but I eventually just gave up on trying old 2.4 kernels and bought a new (well, used) server altogether. I have updated the post with a bit of a warning so readers don’t waste their time. Thanks for reminding me to update this older post!