OpenCompute IPMI with F11 / F12 Issues

These are more notes than a real blog post.  Working with IPMI on OpenCompute has weird quirks and one of those is the Serial BIOS with the F11 and F12 keys.

Here’s an example of using ipmitool to pull information remotely about the power status

$ ipmitool -C3 -I lanplus -H 172.16.56.180 -U admin -P <password> power status

Using the Serial BIOS

The serial BIOS interface is a bit brain damaged in that it does not recognise the “F11”, and “F12” key escape codes that most terminal programs send, instead you can send “Esc-!”, and “Esc-@” (yes very logical, as long as the ‘@’ key is normally typed using ‘Shift-2’ – as on US keyboards, not miles away from the ‘2’ key, as on many non-US keyboards).  These escapes from HP, and Dell serial BIOS’ may or may not be useful:

Defined As     F1     F2     F3     F4     F5     F6     F7     F8     F9     F10    F11    F12
Keyboard Entry <ESC>1 <ESC>2 <ESC>3 <ESC>4 <ESC>5 <ESC>6 <ESC>7 <ESC>8 <ESC>9 <ESC>0 <ESC>! <ESC>@

Defined As     Home   End    Insert Delete PageUp PageDn
Keyboard Entry <ESC>h <ESC>k <ESC>+ <ESC>- <ESC>? <ESC>/

Use the <ESC><Ctrl><M> key sequence for <Ctrl><M> Use the <ESC><Ctrl><H> key sequence for <Ctrl><H> Use the <ESC><Ctrl><I> key sequence for <Ctrl><I> Use the <ESC><Ctrl><J> key sequence for <Ctrl><J> Use the <ESC><X><X> key sequence for <Alt><x>, where x is any letter key, and X is the upper case of that key

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