Log in to the IPA virtual console for hardware troubleshooting

Container Cloud uses kernel and initramfs files with the pre-installed Ironic Python Agent (IPA) for inspection of server hardware. The IPA image initramfs is based on Ubuntu Server.

If you need to troubleshoot hardware during inspection, you can use the IPA virtual console to assess hardware logs and image configuration.

To log in to the IPA virtual console of a bare metal host:

1. Create the BareMetalHost object for the required bare metal host as described in Add a bare metal host using CLI and wait for inspection to complete.

   Caution

   Meantime, do not create the Machine object for the bare metal host being inspected to prevent automatic provisioning.

2. Using the pwgen utility, recover the dynamically calculated password of the IPA image:

   kubectl --kubeconfig <pathToManagementClusterKubeconfig> \
   -n kaas get secret ironic-ssh-key \
   -o jsonpath="{.data.public}" | base64 -d > /tmp/ironic-ssh-key.pub
   pwgen -H /tmp/ironic-ssh-key.pub -1 -s 16
   rm /tmp/ironic-ssh-key.pub
   

3. Remotely log in to the IPA console of the bare metal host using the devuser user name and the password obtained in the previous step. For example, use IPMItool, Integrated Lights-Out, or the iDRAC web UI.

Note

To assess the IPA logs, use the journalctl -u ironic-python-agent.service command.