How to access HP’s ILO remote console via SSH

February 13, 2016 Keeran Marquis 4 Comments

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This will be a quick reminder for myself on how you can remote console via SSH on HP Blade Server and Standalone Servers 🙂

1. Connect to the ilo using SSH, Whether its with PuTTy (Windows) or Terminal (MacOSX or Linux) with the super or admin user and pass.
ssh [email protected]_address

[[email protected] ~]$ ssh 10.2.0.21 -l Administrator
[email protected]'s password: 
User:Administrator logged-in to ILO----n.(10.2.0.21)
iLO 2 Standard Blade Edition 2.25 at 16:36:26 Apr 14 2014
Server Name: vMX-Bay1
Server Power: On

hpiLO->

2. Having entered onto the server now via ilo, you will be able to connect to the remote console by either using the commands TEXTCONS or VSP

TEXTCONS

TEXTCONS is short for text console. When I used TEXTCONS, I got this output Monitor is in graphics mode or an unsupported text mode.

hpiLO-> TEXTCONS

Starting text console.
Press 'ESC (' to return to the CLI Session.

hpiLO-> 

Monitor is in graphics mode or an unsupported text mode.

From some quick reading it appears that some OS do not supported access using TEXTCONS, which is no help for me, however this is one way!

VSP

VSP is Virtual Serial Port. As the name suggests it is the virtual port, that is the same as, if you connected a serial cable onto the server. This worked a treat for me, so I am happy now 😀

hpiLO-> VSP

Starting virtual serial port.
Press 'ESC (' to return to the CLI Session.

hpiLO-> Virtual Serial Port active: IO=0x03F8 INT=4

Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS lab13 ttyS0

lab13 login:

Job done 🙂

Other CLI commands available:

HP CLI Commands:

POWER    : Control server power.
UID      : Control Unit-ID light.
NMI      : Generate an NMI.
VM       : Virtual media commands.
VSP      : Invoke virtual serial port.
VSP LOG  : Invoke virtual serial port data logging.
TEXTCONS : Invoke Remote Text Console on supported platforms.

NOTE

It is important to note as well, there some OS that don’t support TEXTCONS or VSP. I had installed ESXi 6 on the blade and although it didn’t give me an error I wasn’t able to get any output. So this can be a little hit and miss at times. Its something I probably should look into but when i have some time in the future!

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Keeran Marquis

Network Engineer

Keeran Marquis is a Network Engineer. His main goal is to learn everything within the Networking field, pick up a little bit of scripting, be a poor man sysadmin and share whatever he knows! All Posts are his own views, opinions and experiences, no guarantees they will work for you but point you in the right direction 🙂

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4 thoughts on “How to access HP’s ILO remote console via SSH”

phanishanker September 27, 2016 at 04:53

Hey keeran,
Thanks for sharing. However when i tried TEXTCONS or VSP, both hangs and no response. Please let me know if u have any workaround for this.

regards
phani

Reply »
Abhijit Dutta September 13, 2018 at 21:19

Hi,

That was useful. But how to get out of that vsp mode once the work is done.

Regards,
AD

Reply »
1. Keeran Marquis Post AuthorNovember 21, 2018 at 17:45
  
  This is a good question, that in my genius i didnt test for myself 😐
  
  So i dont actually know sorry 🙁
  
  Reply »
2. abishek December 13, 2018 at 15:11
  
  Exit out of the VM and press Esc + (shift+9).
  
  Which is essentially Esc + ( (open parenthesis)
  
  Reply »

TEXTCONS

VSP

Keeran Marquis

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4 thoughts on “How to access HP’s ILO remote console via SSH”

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