After lots of reading, I've finally have an ESXi 4.1u1 setup running on an X8SIL-F (w/ X3450, 8GB Ram) but I seem to be running into a slight problem. The problem persists on 4.1, and 4.1u1, haven't tried 4.0.
The /var/log/ipmi/0 folder grows to the point where there is no space left, so any configuration changes/etc don't get saved; it happened twice until I finally figured out it was this causing the other propblems. I've done searching on vmware communities and on here and have seen only a handful of postings on it and they all say disabling the IPMI (VMKernel.Boot.ipmiEnabled) or disable CIM (UserVars.CIMEnabled) as a work around fixes it; and from testing it works. But of course, one loses all the sensor data as a result. With these enabled, after about 6-7 minutes the SEL files in the folder fill up causing the out of space errors, which intern means any configuration changes made after this point aren't saved.
Since this board seems to be fairly popular among [H] users for lab setups, I'm surprised I've never seen this mentioned in my readings on here (which i've done a lot of, long time lurker). Is there something I'm missing as for configuring this so this does not happen?
I hope I've explained everything properly...
Anyways, is there a way to change the logging behavior, like set a hard file size limit, or something?
=== SOLLUTION ===
I have a solution to this issue, that doesn't involve disabling IPMI in ESXi or CIM.
It seems as tho, from a complete power loss (so new board, or unplugging the power) the sensor statuses are reset. So all fans are listed in a normal state.
Now, if you do not use all the fan headers, the remaining fan headers they will stay in a normal state with an RPM of 0 which seems to cause issues for ESXi (causing the /var/log/ipmi/0/sel and /var/log/ipmi/0/sel.raw file to fill up till MAINSYS is full).
So the solution is to either:
a) use all the fan headers if you have room for the fans
b) boot the machine to the bios and sit there, then take a spare fan, or one you're already got plugged in and plug it into each unused fan header, wait a few seconds, then unplug it.
The effect of doing (b) will cause an alert on the unused fan headers causing them to go into a Lower Non-recoverable state, and have a red box in the IPMI page under sensor readings. Depending on the number of fans you're not using, you'll have 3 events per fan in your event log now (and subsequently, the sel and sel.raw will have these as well but will no longer grow).
I've tested this on my board, I had it powered down and unplugged it for a day or two, when I went to power it back on, the log files started filling again, so I did solution b) and everything is working again.
Additional Note: with using solution (b), this will need to be redone every time there is a complete power loss.
The /var/log/ipmi/0 folder grows to the point where there is no space left, so any configuration changes/etc don't get saved; it happened twice until I finally figured out it was this causing the other propblems. I've done searching on vmware communities and on here and have seen only a handful of postings on it and they all say disabling the IPMI (VMKernel.Boot.ipmiEnabled) or disable CIM (UserVars.CIMEnabled) as a work around fixes it; and from testing it works. But of course, one loses all the sensor data as a result. With these enabled, after about 6-7 minutes the SEL files in the folder fill up causing the out of space errors, which intern means any configuration changes made after this point aren't saved.
Since this board seems to be fairly popular among [H] users for lab setups, I'm surprised I've never seen this mentioned in my readings on here (which i've done a lot of, long time lurker). Is there something I'm missing as for configuring this so this does not happen?
I hope I've explained everything properly...
Anyways, is there a way to change the logging behavior, like set a hard file size limit, or something?
=== SOLLUTION ===
I have a solution to this issue, that doesn't involve disabling IPMI in ESXi or CIM.
It seems as tho, from a complete power loss (so new board, or unplugging the power) the sensor statuses are reset. So all fans are listed in a normal state.
Now, if you do not use all the fan headers, the remaining fan headers they will stay in a normal state with an RPM of 0 which seems to cause issues for ESXi (causing the /var/log/ipmi/0/sel and /var/log/ipmi/0/sel.raw file to fill up till MAINSYS is full).
So the solution is to either:
a) use all the fan headers if you have room for the fans
b) boot the machine to the bios and sit there, then take a spare fan, or one you're already got plugged in and plug it into each unused fan header, wait a few seconds, then unplug it.
The effect of doing (b) will cause an alert on the unused fan headers causing them to go into a Lower Non-recoverable state, and have a red box in the IPMI page under sensor readings. Depending on the number of fans you're not using, you'll have 3 events per fan in your event log now (and subsequently, the sel and sel.raw will have these as well but will no longer grow).
I've tested this on my board, I had it powered down and unplugged it for a day or two, when I went to power it back on, the log files started filling again, so I did solution b) and everything is working again.
Additional Note: with using solution (b), this will need to be redone every time there is a complete power loss.
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