The PowerEdge R200 is equiped with an IPMI controller which enables you to control power settings and read sensors over LAN. The version on the R200 is 1.5 which is rather old and outdated, but it does the job.

One of the more hidden features of the IPMI controller is the ability to support serial console over IPMI. The documentation for this feature is rather non-existent as far as I know, and it requires a number of steps to work properly.

To get it working you need the following:

• Enter the BIOS and set Serial to BMC NIC under Integrated Pheriphals
• Set the Serial Port to Serial 1 and 19200
• Make sure the IPMI controller is enabled, have a administrative password and an IP address
• Install the Dell Linux Remote Access Utilities from Dell’s support pages  (you just want the “linux/bmc/osabmcutil9g”-package.
• Start the dsm_bmu_solproxy32 service and telnet to localhost on port 623. From there you can connect to your IPMI hosts.
• Please read http://support.euro.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/pe2850/en/ug/t1390ab.htm to see how different system keys such as F1, F2 and Ctrl+Alt+Del are remapped on the serial console.

That’s it. No more visits to the server room :-) This procedure should work for all the IPMI v1.5 BMC’s from Dell. The IPMI v2.0 have Serial-Over-LAN support directly in the ipmitool package so you don’t need the solproxy. The host should be configured in the same way though.