Silencing HPE servers

Hey there!

Some of you might be running a DL380p G8 (or any other G8 server from HP with iLO 4, which is supported by this tweak), and want it to be nearly silent. I've found a way to do it, which doesn't involve (almost) any physical work! Let's get into it! (I've gotten the fans at a constant 10% (I configured 10% since I get less whine and next-to-nothing ramp ups that way) and am perfectly able to sleep ~3m away from it).

So before we begin, just a quick note:

I am NOT responsible for any possible damage you may do to your OWN server.
You should not run any script without checking what it does, especially for random scripts from Reddit.
You should have physical access to the machine.
You should have quite some time, ear protection and some GNU/Linux knowledge.
You have to be root user for this.
You have to run some sort of Debian GNU/Linux baremetal.
Make sure to not set a max value, as the server could potentially overheat and harm your components due to i.e. extensive workloads.
Make sure to save your fan commands somewhere, as the current iLO firmware resets every time on boot.

Note from their GitHub:

Please note: At this time, v4.77 is the most recent iLO that has a working patch. After this version, HP has removed many of the control utilities that make patching v2.78 and v2.79 useful. While this may change in the future, bringing useful tools to v2.79 (the current latest) will take an extremely large amount of work. The patching works fine here, it just does not provide access to useful functions

Installing/prepairing

1sudo apt-add-repository universe
2sudo apt update
3sudo apt-get install python2-minimal git curl

Install Pip

1curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/pip/2.7/get-pip.py --output get-pip.py && sudo python2 get-pip.py

1python2 -m pip install virtualenv
2git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/kendallgoto/ilo4_unlock
3cd ilo4_unlock
4python2 -m virtualenv venv source venv/bin/activate
5pip install -r requirements.txt

Building

1./build.sh init
2This will build iLO version 2.77
3
4./build.sh 277

Patching

Note: this will make the server scream for ~5 minutes. To patch, you need to have iLO Security Override set to enabled. On a DL380p G8 I had to flip the first DIP switch on the motherboard, just under the PSU's. Obviously do this whilst the server is powered down.

Make sure any HP libraries are unloaded and let's go

1sudo modprobe -r hpilo
2mkdir -p flash
3cp binaries/flash_ilo4 binaries/CP027911.xml flash/
4cp build/ilo4_277.bin.patched flash/ilo4_250.bin
5cd flash

Flash iLO 4. This will make the server SCREAM!!!

1sudo ./flash_ilo4 --direct

Once the command has finished and the fans are back to normal, remove power and disable iLO Security Override.

Silencing the fans

You can ssh into your iLO and type fan info g. Lower the fans with these commands:

1fan pid x lo 1000

Here, x is the pid with an astherisk( * ) next to it.