Use stunnel? Then beware of Supermicro's latest IPMIView and IPMITools!

[Spearfoot]

TL;DR: The Windows version of Supermicro's IPMIView 2.12 and IPMITools 2.16 install their own copy of stunnel, ignoring and disabling any existing stunnel installation! So if you are among the small contingent of people who use both stunnel and Supermicro server management tools on Windows machines, caveat utilitor!

I found this out the hard way, of course.

Recently I upgraded the IPMI firmware on my X10SL7-F from Redfish v3.27 to 3.45, after which I could no longer connect to the server with the IPMIView KVM console. So I upgraded IPMIView to v2.12 and the KVM connection started working again. Yay! I thought. Success! I thought. But no...

None of my VNC or email connections worked any longer. After a little digging around, I figured out that the new version of IPMIView had installed its own version of stunnel; blithely replacing itself as the Windows stunnel service, and breaking all of my email and VNC connections in the process. And what's more, it seems to do this on an ad hoc basis, creating the stunnel setup in a temporary directory in the Application Data directory under my user directory. Yikes! Kludge to the max!

So... I uninstalled IPMIView, re-installed the older version (2.11), and re-flashed the IPMI firmware to version 3.27. Now everything works... except that I can't connect to the IPMI web interface; IPMIView and the KVM module work fine, I can ping the IPMI IP address of the server, I can use the IPMITools and IPMIUtil against it... but no web interface. It did work when the firmware was at v3.45, FWIW. And it was working before I started this merry-go-round.

Evidently the Redfish v3.45 firmware requires an SSL-encrypted connection and Supermicro chose a kludgy stunnel installation to set it up. Guess I'm stuck with the current versions of everything until they change this.

IPMIView versions 2.11 don't have this problem. I also checked the IPMITools archives and version 2.16 includes the stunnel snafu; previous versions do not.

 

[Ericloewe]

What a pain in the ass. Almost makes me glad they haven't released any updates for the X11SSM-F since 2015.

 

[Spearfoot]

I was finally able to get the IPMI web page to load, by the simple expedient of resetting the BMC to factory defaults with IPMICfg. Wheeeee!

 

[averyfreeman]

TL;DR: The Windows version of Supermicro's IPMIView 2.12 and IPMITools 2.16 install their own copy of stunnel, ignoring and disabling any existing stunnel installation! So if you are among the small contingent of people who use both stunnel and Supermicro server management tools on Windows machines, caveat utilitor!

Evidently the Redfish v3.45 firmware requires an SSL-encrypted connection and Supermicro chose a kludgy stunnel installation to set it up. Guess I'm stuck with the current versions of everything until they change this..

I found this thread because I was trying to figure out why stunnel had been installed with IPMIVIEW on my newly configured Windows laptop.

I had a perfectly good working copy of IPMIVIEW 2.16 on this old laptop running Ubuntu 19.04 - so I thought.

Until, of course, I wanted to do some configuration in the BIOSes of a couple ESXi hosts I had to take down after months of runtime to deal with failing UPS batteries (also learned the batteries were failing the hard way when a brief power short took one out! Not a sign of a working battery! heh)

Long story short, after fiddling with the broken IPMIVIEW on Ubuntu I quickly realized this proprietary Supermicro (and VMware, for that matter) crap works best in Windows and to not bother any more with trying to get it to work

Promptly formatted an SSD on the old laptop and set up Windows LTSC 2019 which I will NEVER TOUCH AGAIN and use ONLY for configuring Supermicro, VMware, Windows Server, etc. because I only seem to realize the stuff isn't working when it's a fricking emergency.

That's one afternoon I'll never get back... (grumble)