How to Control Fans on NEC Server Under Linux Using IPMI or BMC

fanipmilinux

I have an old NEC Express5800/T120d server.
It was operating under Windows at reasonable fan speed.
I now want to use it at home with Debian, but the fans are always at full speed.

The power supply fan is at full speed. With Windows it was quiet. There is a data cable between the motherboard and the power supply.
The 1 x rear + 3 x front fans are also at full speed. With Windows they were relatively quiet.
Nothing into the BIOS and IPMI console about fan control. Only the current speed is displayed.

 

I installed lm-sensors and fancontrol without success:

$ sensors-detect
... with YES answer everywhere ...
Driver "coretemp":
  * Chip `Intel digital thermal sensor' (confidence: 9)
Driver "to-be-written":
   * ISA bus, address 0xca2
    Chip `IPMI BMC KCS' (confidence: 8)

So sensors-detect only see unusable devices.

 

Nothing more with pwmconfig:

$ pwmconfig
/usr/sbin/pwmconfig: There are no pwm-capable sensor modules installed

 

I installed freeipmi / freeipmi-tools:

$ ipmi-sensors
...
29 | PSU1 Temp        | Temperature                         | 24.00      | C           | 'OK'
...
32 | FAN1             | Fan                                 | 7936.51    | RPM         | 'OK'
33 | FAN2             | Fan                                 | 933.71     | RPM         | 'At or Above (>=) Upper Non-Critical Threshold'
34 | FAN3             | Fan                                 | 933.71     | RPM         | 'At or Above (>=) Upper Non-Critical Threshold'
35 | FAN4             | Fan                                 | N/A        | RPM         | N/A
36 | AIRVOL1          | OEM Reserved                        | 1.31       | unspecified | 'OK'
37 | AIRVOL2          | OEM Reserved                        | 1.31       | unspecified | 'OK'
...

But I don't know how to do more than just looking at the fan speed.
Most IPMI programs included into freeipmi asks for a hostname and user/password but I can not manage to understand what to enter.

 

I also tried upmiutil and ipmitool packages without better success. They all give me the fan status but I do not understand how to configure them.

Best Answer

The last BIOS update for this serie allow a much better control from inside the BIOS.
Nothing is changed from the OS point of view, so you won't have more ability from IPMI or so.

To be clear: I don't know how to use IPMI from command line, so I don't know if it is possible to change fan speed.

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