How to install Dell OpenManage 9.x and racadm on Ubuntu 16.04

Written by Claudio Kuenzler - 0 comments

Published on December 6th 2017 - last updated on July 14th 2021 - Listed in Hardware Monitoring Nagios Icinga

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In the past (a couple of years back) it was somewhat annoying to install Dell's OpenManage software on Linux servers. But Dell obviously has improved the situation by releasing the software through apt repositories.
In short, everything is nicely documented on http://linux.dell.com/repo/community/openmanage/ but I modified some steps and for sake of completeness showing it here, too.

Add the apt repository as a new source:

root@r720:~# sudo echo "deb http://linux.dell.com/repo/community/openmanage/902/xenial xenial main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/linux.dell.com.sources.list

Note: At the time of this writing, version 9.0.2 was the newest available version, hence the "902" in the URL.

Add the apt key from the Dell repos:

root@r720:~# sudo gpg --keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net --recv-key 1285491434D8786F
root@r720:~# gpg -a --export 1285491434D8786F | sudo apt-key add -

Update apt and install srvadmin:

root@r720:~# sudo apt-get update
root@r720:~# sudo apt-get install srvadmin-all

This also installs the racadm tool to access an integrated iDRAC card. As I'm on a Dell PowerEdge R720 server with a iDRAC7 card here, the package srvadmin-idracadm7 is relevant to me.

To check if racadm works correctly and is able to talk to the iDRAC card, launch this command:

root@r720:~# sudo racadm getsysinfo

RAC Information:

RAC Date/Time           = Wed Dec  6 08:37:32 2017

Firmware Version        = 2.50.50.50
Firmware Build          = 33
Last Firmware Update    = 12/05/2017 10:31:09
Hardware Version        = 0.01
MAC Address             = C8:1F:66:01:00:FF

Common settings:
Register DNS RAC Name   = 0
[...]

To be able to communicate with OpenManage, the main service (dataeng) needs to be started:

root@r720:~# sudo service dataeng start

This launches the following processes:

root     26802  4.5  0.0 888880 27376 ?    Ssl  09:39   0:01 /opt/dell/srvadmin/sbin/dsm_sa_datamgrd
root     26897  0.0  0.0 684076 17660 ?    Ss   09:39   0:00  \_ /opt/dell/srvadmin/sbin/dsm_sa_datamgrd
root     26873  0.0  0.0 228992  7756 ?    Ssl  09:39   0:00 /opt/dell/srvadmin/sbin/dsm_sa_eventmgrd
root     26892  0.5  0.0 373844  9688 ?    Ssl  09:39   0:00 /opt/dell/srvadmin/sbin/dsm_sa_snmpd

To test omreport, launch this command:

root@r720:~# sudo /opt/dell/srvadmin/bin/omreport system summary
sh: 1: /bin/rpm: not found
System Summary

------------------
Software Profile
------------------
Systems Management
Name                        : Server Administrator
Version                     : 9.0.2
Description                 : Systems Management Software

Operating System
Name                        : Linux
Version                     : Kernel 4.4.0-101-generic (x86_64)
System Time                 : Wed Dec  6 09:41:48 2017
System Bootup Time          : Tue Dec  5 18:22:29 2017
[...]

Now that omreport works, we can use the monitoring plugin check_openmanage to monitor the server's hardware health (and integrate it in Nagios/Icinga):

root@r720:~# sudo wget http://folk.uio.no/trondham/software/check_openmanage-3.7.12/check_openmanage -O /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_openmanage
root@r720:~# sudo chmod 755 /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_openmanage

root@r720:~# sudo /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_openmanage -a -i
[servicetag] ESM log content: 20 critical, 0 non-critical, 13 ok

Follow-up with OpenManage 10.x on Ubuntu 20.04

Also read the follow-up article how to install OpenManage 10.x on Ubuntu 20.04.

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