[dedicated thread] Dell Open Manage Appliance (OME)

AtaxyaNetwork

I rebooted the VM with a Debian CD and searched using grep to check if "/dev/sd" was present in any files—and it was!

You'll need to modify two files (with a live CD):
    /opt/dell/omc/utilities/tui/bin/ome_disk_config.sh
    /opt/dell/mcsi/appliance/scripts/appliance_ressource.sh

In these files, replace /dev/sd with /dev/xvd.

After making those changes, reboot the VM, and you should see the 415GB appear on the "Configure Appliance Disk Size" page.

Let me know if this works!

pctechsolution

@AtaxyaNetwork First off thank you for taking the time to answer my question and I made that change and BANG it saw the extra space in the appliance when scanning disks however now I'm met with this error. I don't remember the CPU or memory being an issue only disk space before I made the above changes. Even though I scanned and added the disk space still shows 0GB free. I also added 30GB of memory to the server but showing 0GB allocated! The first time around I only gave it 16GB and said not enough and I added more like 24GB and the memory error went away but now all those errors are persistent?

Also shows in the appliance the disk space?

AtaxyaNetwork

@pctechsolution Hum, first time i see this issue. It's probably the same thing as the disk (the appliance don't know how to fetch CPU and Memory data). I don't have time the next few days to search the files, but i'll do that ASAP

pctechsolution

@AtaxyaNetwork Thank you. Just to note I installed latest version from site.

TheNorthernLight

@AtaxyaNetwork First, I want to say, THANK YOU!!! for putting this together! Legit, kudo's.

I ran into one problem in your article:
"for xen-blkfront.ko
mv xen-blkfront.ko /lib/modules/5.14.21-150400.24.108-default/kernel/block/
for xen-netfront.ko
mv xen-netfront.ko /lib/modules/5.14.21-150400.24.108-default/kernel/net/"

If I try the MV command after the for line, I get MV is an invalid command. I simply bypassed the for lines, and did a pure MV.

It seems to have worked (I can now boot, and get into it).

Second related question: Is there any way to install the XCPNG Client drivers at the same time, so this VM responds to XCPNG commands (shutdown/etc) ?

TheNorthernLight

@AtaxyaNetwork I tried the same edits, and I received the same errors btw. After looking at the instructions further, Dell's KVM user guide says there should be two hard drives as part of the VM.
First drive is for the OS/Base system, second hard drive is for plugins and any related data.

It does say it will boot without the second drive, but basically wont be useable without it. I tried re-doing the instructions but converting the second drive at the same time, and the problem persists. So I think there is a step somewhere after the ko driver install to help it "see" the second drive at all, not really sure how to fix that.

AtaxyaNetwork

@TheNorthernLight @pctechsolution
I'll have some time the next day to work on this.
So basically the things to check:

Why CPU/RAM/DISK is not correctly displayed
Have a way to plug a second disk and have it seen by OME
Have a way to install tools

Do you know if the second disk has something special in it, or I can just add a disk via XOA and call it a day ?

(BTW, if you have support from Dell, you can push them to be compatible with XCP-ng/Xen. I'll be happy to discuss with them to make the appliance work natively )

TheNorthernLight

@AtaxyaNetwork Since I cant get it to mount on boot, I have no idea if there is something special about it (I suspect it just has some existing folder structures, but I'm not 100% sure).

Also, I wish I had Dell support, but we buy all of our hardware second-hand. So no support contract here.

AtaxyaNetwork

@TheNorthernLight No problem, buying second-hand hardware is good for the planet
I'll give you an update as soon as I find some clues about the disk problem

pctechsolution

@AtaxyaNetwork Thank you. Let me know anyway I can help or test. Im not sure about needing a second disk.

joncuddy

@AtaxyaNetwork
Thank you for providing these instructions. I tried this awhile back in January and it looked very promising, but I ended up getting stuck with similar problems like those listed above. I was checking this thread to see if there was an update, so it's somewhat nice to see I'm not the only one struggling with this.

We do have a support contract with Dell except they won't budge from there position. I went back and forth with my rep for a couple months with "best effort" but ultimately I was told XCP-ng is not a supported hypervisor. The old version on 3.x still works, so I'm stuck with that.

Hopefully others are asking Dell to add support for XCP-ng. I'll continue to watch this space for an update. Thanks again for your efforts.

olivierlambert

Thanks @joncuddy

We have to get back to Dell with a very large customer to change their mind. Catch 22 issue, but we have more and more (very) large customers, so this will change.

@stormi we need to note that somewhere internally and monitor the opportunity to get back to Dell with a deal big enough to change their mind.

flakpyro

I'd love to see support added for XCP-NG by Dell as well. I also run Lenovo xClarity Administrator and their appliance works in XCP-NG without any modification!

AtaxyaNetwork

@joncuddy @TheNorthernLight @pctechsolution

I have a new version available !

What's changed:

Fixed disk detection
CPU/RAM is correctly detected
I was able to install and uninstall some plugins (Power Manager, Integration for VMware Center, Operation Manager)
Network is configured with DHCP by default
Added the guest-tools !

To do:

Try to hack the grub password (because it's fun)
Have more feedback to tackle the last bugs (I know my fixes is not perfect)
Have Dell official support

Ping me if you want the appliance, I'll send you a link with the password !
I'll try to use it with my 3 R630 machines to do further tests

@olivierlambert can we change the topic title to something more accurate ?
Since it became the OME megathread

olivierlambert

On it, thanks for your work @AtaxyaNetwork

TheNorthernLight

@AtaxyaNetwork This is fantastic!
What remaining last bugs are you aware of?

AtaxyaNetwork

@TheNorthernLight guest-tools and SELinux, I bypass it, but it's not the best case I can achieve. I am working on a better fix

archw

@flakpyro
I'd love to see what you did!
On the GRUB password thing, I cheated and opened it with another instance os SLES and jacked around with the menus from a working system. I tried a million things but could never get the tools installation to work!

Mount up basically any linux installer or system rescue ISO.
Boot into that (If using SLES, go to other options and select "RESCUE MODE" and wait).... get a shell...
This will let you ssh into it
sudo ssh-keygen -A
sudo service ssh --full-restart
ip addr # so I can know how to get in from putty
cat $PATH
passwd (makes a new password so you can ssh inot it)
/sbin/sshd

lvdisplay
mkdir -p /mnt/sysimage/boot
mount /dev/xvda2 /mnt/sysimage/boot
mount /dev/OMCAppVG/LVRoot /mnt/sysimage
mount -t proc none /mnt/sysimage/proc
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/sysimage/dev
mount -o bind /run /mnt/sysimage/run
/mnt/sysimage
for x in sys proc run dev tmp; do mount --bind /$x /mnt/sysimage/$x; done
chroot /mnt/sysimage

I saw these instructions somone where but I coudl not figure out these steps ?

8 ) Enable root logins in /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Enable sshd via: systemctl enable sshd
Set a temporary password for root via passwd
Exit the chroot and the installer/rescue image... let it boot back into OME
Cache your ssh key in root's keystore via whatever method you like... my preferred is ssh-copy-id
Remove root's temporary password...

flakpyro

So testing the appliance and here is what i have encountered so far:

Boots up no problem, XO sees tools installed and all stats work.

It took me two attempts to upgrade it to 4.4.0.75, the first attempt failed, i reverted a snapshot from before trying and upon trying again it was successful.

However i can no longer install / update plugins, back to throwing disk space capacity errors. I'm guessing whatever was modified in the appliance you shared was reverted by the update which now causes it to think there is no disk space again.

AtaxyaNetwork

@archw Thanks for the idea ! I'll try this

@flakpyro yeah unfortunately I think dell overwrite every file when updating the appliance. It will be an issue for every update.

I can try to prepare an up-to-date instance and give it to you, if you want. But I'll need to regenerate the appliance each time an update is available and depending on if dell is providing regulars updates, I can be annoying