I have a computer system whose motherboard has ASRock Rack baseboard management controller (BMC) that allows me to interact with the system via the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (PMI). One day, I noticed that the BMC ceases to have an IP address assigned. This is obviously a problem since the system does not have a monitor directly connect to it, and the management console was at the time the only means for me to administrate the system fully.
Neither of the following I attempted resolved the issue,
- I unplug and re-plug the Ethernet cable to the Ethernet port of the BMC.
- I reboot the network gateway that runs the DHCP server to allocate the IP address to it.
- I shutdown the system, and reboot the system.
Finally, I realized that the BMC is a little computer of its own, and I had never rebooted it at all despite the above attempts. With this in mind, I attempted the following solution and it worked!
- Unplug the power cable from the system and plug the power cable back to the system
This in retrospect is the means to reboot the BMC system. Having attempted this, I also wonder, what if I switch off the power switch of the power supply, would it also work? I guess it should be, it reboots the BMC system itself to cut off the power. So simple, after some frustration!
