Using BMC on my IBM Server

A while ago, I purchased a used IBM server that has been a very nice tool. Here’s the specs:
ibm x3455

I have it hooked up to a battery backup unit, which is connected with the USB cable. When the power goes out for a length of time, it powers the machine into a strange state that I cannot get it out of. The light on the front turns orange, and none of the buttons will reboot it. I have to pull the power cord and wait for it to power down. When I plug it back in, it works fine.

I found that the server does have a BMC built in that is supposed to allow for remote power control. There are several IPMI clients that I can install in Linux that should be able to control it. I was able to set the IP address for the console as well use the username and password in the BIOS of the machine.

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Amazon Chime on Linux

My employer is in the process of signing up for Amazon Chime. The challenge for me is that means I need to be able to communicate with them using the tool on my Ubuntu Desktop. At this point, I’m not sure how that’s going to happen!

My First Reactions

I haven’t had the opportunity to use the tool very much, but we have had a couple of meetings so far. We have been using Zoom and Go To Meeting. Zoom has a client app that you have to install, but they do have a nice Linux client. Go To Meeting does have a nice Web Client. I can share my desktop and connect with my headset just from the webapp with out installing anything. Chime has a webapp, but it is very limited. I can’t use my headset nor share my screen. To me, that’s not acceptable for using with clients.

Attempt on Wine

I tried Scivision’s commands:

WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_chime WINEARCH=win32 winecfg
WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_chime winetricks dotnet40
WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_chime wine Chime*.exe

I get this error message:

Unhandled Exception: BibaApplication.ApplicationServices.ApplicationRecoveryException: Failed to Register
   at BibaApplication.ApplicationServices.ApplicationRestartRecoveryManager.RegisterForApplicationRecovery(RecoverySettings settings)
   at BibaApplication.App.OnStartup(StartupEventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Application.<.ctor>b__1(Object unused)
   at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.InternalRealCall(Delegate callback, Object args, Int32 numArgs)
   at MS.Internal.Threading.ExceptionFilterHelper.TryCatchWhen(Object source, Delegate method, Object args, Int32 numArgs, Delegate catchHandler)
   at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.WrappedInvoke(Delegate callback, Object args, Int32 numArgs, Delegate catchHandler)
   at System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherOperation.InvokeImpl()
   at System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherOperation.InvokeInSecurityContext(Object state)

I tried installing these items:

WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_chime winetricks ie8
WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_chime winetricks mdac28
WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_chime winetricks d3dx11_43
WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_chime winetricks crypt32

None of those seem to have made much difference. It does actually install here:
C:\users\skp\Application Data\Chime\Chime.exe
I can try to launch it with this:

WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_chime wine 'C:\users\skp\Application Data\Chime\Chime.exe'

But, it fails to run the app itself.

I tried with mono:

$ mono /home/skp/.wine_chime/drive_c/users/skp/Application\ Data/Chime/Chime.exe
The entry point method could not be loaded due to Could not load file or assembly or one of its dependencies. assembly:PresentationFramework, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35 type:<unknown type> member:<none>

2nd attempt:

rm -rf ~/.wine_chime/
WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_chime WINEARCH=win32 winecfg
WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_chime ./winetricks dotnet45
WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_chime ./winetricks ie8
WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_chime wine Chime*.exe

3rd attempt (I found that there is some issue with Winetricks, and it wasn’t really installing dotnet 4.0)

rm -rf ~/.wine_chime/
WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_chime WINEARCH=win32 wineboot --init
WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_chime wine uninstaller  # uninstall Mono
WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_chime wine ./dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64.exe
WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_chime ./winetricks ie8
WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_chime ./winetricks settings win10
WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_chime wine Chime*.exe

I had to download the dotnet framework from here:
https://www.microsoft.com/net/download/dotnet-framework-runtime
https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/Download/confirmation.aspx?id=17718

I also tried PlayOnLinux. I got a few more meaniful error messages and it let me try different Wine versions better.

Warning: This seems to have broke my system! XWindows wouldn’t work after this, so I think it was these two packages.

sudo apt-get install p11-kit:i386
sudo apt-get install libp11-kit-gnome-keyring:i386

In the end, I was not successful. I can’t get any part of Chime to work! Please comment if you get anything.

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Attic Tips

I’ve been saving space with my backups by putting them into an attic repository. I have a backup roughly every 6 months, but much of it is the same info. By using attic, I can simply store each one into a single repository without using a huge amount of space.

My latest issue was my backup session was interrupted in the middle. I had to figure out how to resume.

Spacing

Just to give you an idea of amounts of storage …

  • Current Home Directory: 378G (not backed up yet)
  • April Backup: 320G (backed up)
  • Attic Repository Size: 507G
  • Attic includes 4 backups

Adding a backup

So, here’s the command that I used to add my backup directory to the repo.

attic create --verbose \
     /backup-drive/backup-repo/repo.attic::2016-04-23-Pistachio \
     /home/skp/mnt/2016-04-23-Pistachio\ Backup 

Resuming a Backup

I’m having to run my commands over SSH since my server’s kind of hard to get to without a screen. I had to take my laptop with me before the backup completed, and I had to stop the backup.

It creates a checkpoint every 5 minutes as I understand. I could see the checkpoint by running a list command:

attic list /backup-drive/backup-repo/repo.attic

Here’s the output (after I restarted it and it finished):

2012-11-10-pecan                     Sat Apr 23 00:21:13 2016
2014-10-19-pistachio.checkpoint      Sat Apr 23 21:06:24 2016
2014-10-19-pistachio                 Sun Apr 24 04:51:12 2016
2013-05-25-pecan.checkpoint          Sat Oct 29 08:42:25 2016
2013-05-25-pecan                     Tue Nov  1 10:54:33 2016
2016-04-23-Pistachio.checkpoint      Sun May 28 09:02:29 2017
2016-04-23-Pistachio                 Mon May 29 02:37:59 2017

I was looking for some special command to make it restart. I actually just used the same command that I had initially used.

attic create --verbose \
     /backup-drive/backup-repo/repo.attic::2016-04-23-Pistachio \
     /home/skp/mnt/2016-04-23-Pistachio\ Backup 

Disconnectable Sessions

Next time, I thought I would look for a better solution. I like RDP in that I can disconnect and my session keeps running. I found this command would let me do the same thing with SSH sessions:

screen

To reconnect, I can just run:

screen -r

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