supermicro IPMI DHCP never tries to get a new IP?

[artlessknave]

Disclaimer: yes, i know many, if not most, set a static IP. this has become kind of a curiosity now.
it's not directly realted to truenas, but I know many in these forums use the supermicro boards, so I figured maybe somebody happens to have the answer.

I wanted to do some rearranging in my network and wanted to set everything from pfsense until i get it all where I want it, but IPMI will not use the static DHCP address it's assigned to from pfsense.
ever.
it will keep the manual static IP, even when set to DHCP, with the MAC address set on pfsense to a different IP. everything I understand says it should just pick the new address, but it wont. I can set the new address static, which completely works, but if i set it back to DHCP, it will go back to the old address, which isn't set anywhere, and isn't in the DHCP automatic scope.
does anyone know why? or how I can find out why?
it's not exactly broken, but it was very annoying until I figured out that all my IPMI's were using their old addresses *forever*.

 

[Ericloewe]

Which board is it - Both X9 Xeon E5 and X11 Xeon E3? Are the system firmware and IPMI firmware up to date?

 

[artlessknave]

hmm. i thought it was all, but rechecking every board, it looks like it might be all the x9's (never set the a1sri to dhcp so unable to say if they do it)
x9dbu
X9SPU-F
X9SPU
X9SCM-F
I also have these, but it looks like they are working as I would expect
x11ssm
x8dt6-a-iso18
everything is as updated as i can get it (the x11, somehow, has higher versions than supermicro has, but that's a mystery for another day...)

 

[Ericloewe]

Supermicro often has firmware available internally that isn’t widely-published, but is available via support.

In any case, it sounds like an X9 bug. Not much that can be done about it. X10 boards are seeing some open-source replacement firmware being developed, but the X9s have a less popular BMC, so they’re not likely to get as much attention.

 

[artlessknave]

ooo, open source firmware is interesting.
I figured it might be a bug, just wanted to see if anybody found a solution or workaround.
I also found out I cannot boot nvme from at least the x9's, much to my annoyance :(
this firmware would be from the website, not support, so why it's a lower version I dunno. might have to ask support about it.

 

[ChrisRJ]

If I take my X9SRi-F as a "reference", what you observe is intended behavior. Each time I want the board to request an IP address via DHCP, I just enable that in the BIOS. Having done that, during the next reboot (and only then, never during any later reboot) the board will get the intended IP address. Without that setting the board will ignore DHCP.

I am pretty certain this is a security feature against rogue DHCP servers.

BTW: My setup seems to be exactly like yours, in that I have pfSense give the board a "fixed" address based on the MAC address.

 

[artlessknave]

the only time I have seen that is these x9 boards. enabling DHCP on any device should request an address from the DHCP server immediately, and then request an address when the lease time expires.
I would struggle to believe that could be intended behaviour, since that breaks DHCP protocol, particularly when the other supermicro IPMI's act correctly.

 

[artlessknave]

I think i figured it out. my pfsense HA was fubar but partially working, and the 2nd node was responding randomly to DHCP requests
at some point I aparently messed with the sync IP and it couldnt bloody sync. it has been givng me errors for awhile but I coudlnt figure out why, until I really dug into it and finally spotted my IP mismatch.
TL:DR: PEBKAC.