AMI BIOS iKVM (Asus Z8PE-D12) failing to open console redirection
Friday, February 14. 2014
I was trying to see the remote console of one of my servers:
It said: "Could not create token for this session. Max session limit might have reached". This was yet another reminder that Asus iKVM isn't the sharpest tool in the box, it generally responds slowly and sometimes it does weird things. Thanks to Java, it wasn't easy to get the console application running, it said a number of things, including a complaint:
... but after sorting out a number of Java issues it spat out an error-message with XML-content of:
<jnlp spec="1.0+" codebase="http://192.168.1.11/Java">
<information>
<title>JViewer</title>
<vendor>American Megatrends, Inc.</vendor>
<description kind="one-line">JViewer Console Redirection Application</description>
<description kind="tooltip">JViewer Console Redirection Application</description>
<description kind="short"> JViewer enables a user to view the video display of managed
server via KVM. It also enables the user to redirect his local keyboard, mouse for
managing the server remotely. </description>
</information>...
<resources>
<j2se version="1.5+"/>
<jar href="release/JViewer.jar"/>
</resources>
<application-desc>
<argument>192.168.1.11</argument>
<argument>7578</argument>
<argument>
<html>
<head>
<title>Document Error: Page not found</title>
</head>
<body>
<h2>Access Error: Page not found</h2>
<p>Could not create token for this session. Max session limit might have reached
</p>
</body>
</html>
</argument>
</application-desc>
</jnlp>
I found out somebody who had the same issue at Asus' discussion forums article [Problem]iKVM Remote Control Console w/ Java exception error. There was a suggestion to unplug the power cord. In my case the server is couple hundred kilometers away in a secure data center where I certainly do not have any access. Sure, I could write the support and ask them to do that but ... I'm pretty sure there has to be a way to reset the BMC remotely.
Then I remembered something I did a while ago with ipmitool on Linux-shell. Running:
# ipmitool bmc help
MC Commands:
reset <warm|cold>
guid
info
There is a reset-command in the list. Google led me to an article "Restarting an IBM BMC without restarting the server itself". I wasn't sure what would happen. My first guess was that it would do the same thing as typing "google" into a Google search - the entire world would implode to a singularity. So it is very important not to that. But I really needed the remote console. I was willing to try:
# ipmitool bmc reset cold
Sent cold reset command to MC
Nothing serious happened immediately. The Linux was responsive and world didn't come to an end. After a minute or so, ipmitool bmc info -command yielded a response! The IPMI was back on-line. A logon to web-console:
Yep. I had my console back.
I sure hope that all remote console manufacturers would stop using Java for their apps. It is such a bitch to get a Java application working on after 1.7.0_51 was released. See: "Java 7u51 will not accept JNLP with self-signed certificate?" about other people complaining about that. Anyway, all ended well and I didn't have to drive to the server to do some maintenance. 
