HOWTO: Install DELL OpenManage System Administrator on exotic Linux distributions

If you happen to have to manage some Dell server running some exotic-not-supported-at-all distribution like, for example, Slackware or Gentoo, there’s a trick you can use that can saves you a lot of PITA. It envolves using debootstrap and some well known unofficial Debian Dell repository. Here we go:

1. First of all, check your kernel has IPMI support. If it doesn’t, rebuild it to have IPMI enabled (Device Drivers -> Character Devices -> IPMI). Build every module you find here.
2. Load the just built modules:
   modprobe ipmi_msghandler
modprobe ipmi_si
modprobe ipmi_devintf
3. Install debootstrap. With Gentoo, it’s a simple emerge debootstrap
4. mkdir -p /var/debian
5. debootstrap --arch amd64 etch /var/debian http://http.us.debian.org/debian
   You can obviously change the –arch parameter with the one that better fits your needs, say i386
6. Now, let’s wait while debootstrap does all the dirty work :)
7. mount -o bind /dev /var/debian/dev
8. mount -t proc none /var/debian/proc
9. mount -o bind /sys /var/debian/sys
10. cp /etc/resolv.conf /var/debian/etc
11. chroot /var/debian/ /bin/bash
12. Now we are in our new Debian-lite environment.
13. edit /etc/apt/sources.list to look like this, for example:
    

    deb http://ftp.belnet.be/debian/ etch main non-free contrib
    deb-src http://ftp.belnet.be/debian/ etch main non-free contribdeb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free
    deb-src http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free

    deb ftp://ftp.sara.nl/pub/sara-omsa dell sara
    deb http://linux.dell.com/repo etch dell-software

14. apt-get update
15. apt-get install dellomsa
16. And we are done! If all went well, you should now be able to run tools like “omreport” to inspect your hardware status and “omconfig” to change BIOS settings and much more!

On a side note, after a reboot you have to repeat steps 7,8 and 10 and once in the chroot, issue a /etc/init.d/dataeng start