Backfw

backfw is the firewall that certain GigaTux services are placed behind, primarily the IPMIs for the colocated servers.

The IPMIs can be accessed by using a SSH tunnel to the local IP addresses which are 192.168.1.x. The SSH server is on port 2200. A list of IPs for each server, be it a node or dedicated server can be found on the [Servers] page.

The best way to do this under Linux is to use ssshuttle. An example command to make the IPMI accessible for node00004 is:

 sshuttle -v -r [email protected] 192.168.1.40

Once this is run, you can use your local web browser to connect to http://192.168.1.40/ and access the IPMI securely.

This runs best on a linux based machine, or at least a linux based VPS.

Using Windows

This cannot be done on a Windows PC (as far as we know) for a remote control session as the sshuttle program creates a VPN on the local machine only, so although the ssh connection and web browser work, the java applet runs locally and so does not use the proxy.

Using PuTTY as a proxy

To connect to the IPMI proxy website, you can set up PuTTY as an SSH proxy on a server with sshuttle installed. Connect to the server as normal in Putty, but go to Connection -> SSH -> Tunnels and add a (random) port number in with Dynamic selected before connecting. Once connected, run the sshuttle command above and log in with the appropriate password.

In your browser, set up a proxy server using SOCKS5 (no authentication) with server address localhost and port whatever was entered into PuTTY before. You can then go directly to the IP in your browser and it will route to the correct IPMI webserver

Nodes 1, 2 or 4 get a connection reset message when browsing to the IPMI logon page

A way to resolve this, and this should be done as soon as you notice, is to log into the nodes and do a root reset. Note, this is ipmicfg (works locally only via the IPMI IO port) not ipmitool (which is a network tool).

Look at this:

node00001:~# ipmicfg-linux.x86_64.static -m IP=192.168.1.20 MAC=00:25:90:1B:C8:45

^ OK, it's clearly running, and on the right IP, so something else is wrong. Let's reset it:

node00001:~# ipmicfg-linux.x86_64.static -r BMC cold reset successfully completed!