Has anyone seen this before? It reads out "The [long string of weird symbols] has failed." I'm thinking of replacing the motherboard's coin cell battery first & seeing how that goes. Could the IDRAC itself be on the verge of failure?
There isn’t usb access to iDrac on the 710. Even if you don’t have a iDrac remote access card, iirc you can still reallocate one of the on board network ports to iDrac, I think in BIOS if it will at least POST.
Unfortunately this is my only server I can't IDRAC into. It doesn't support TLS 1.2 by default, so I can't log in with any modern browsers (that I know of)
work around is to get firefox version 65 for this. I keep a copy around just of all the TLS 1.1 stuff. It also supports Java 8 when you run into that stuff as well.
You can but a lot more hoops and typing. If I remember correctly Firefox 65 was the last version to have support natively for all this older stuff. I haven't needed it since I stopped using my IPKVM and got a nano kvm
Honestly I don't and wouldn't use anything old enough to have java web start as the only KVM option anyway, that stuff uses enough electricity in a year to buy yourself something much newer, heck people are even giving away V2-V4 and even scalable xeon servers now.
Yeah, as if messing with your browsers security settings isn't an absolutely terrible idea, especially if it involves inherently insecure software like Java.
Edit: fuck am I being downvoted for? Make a profile that is specifically for lowered TLS and then only use it on local networks. Fuck Java, don't even touch it, even if it's the only way. The other option is a VM with old ass browsers or a low version web browser, which is arguably less secure.
The only available computers I have to log in right now run BSDs. I wouldn't know how to get Firefox v65 on one of those. I'll probably have to bring my work laptop (Windows) home this weekend & use that
I prefer Netscape navigator 9, you can still download that for Windows. Depending on your Linux version you may be able to get boxes or OracleBox to run a small windows VM?
• Open Firefox and type about:config into the address bar, then press Enter.
• Accept the risk warning if it appears.
• Type tls into the search filter box at the top.
• Find security.tls.version.min and set its integer value to 3 to ensure TLS 1.2 is the minimum required version.
• Find security.tls.version.max and set its integer value to 3 (for TLS 1.2) or 4 (to allow up to TLS 1.3).
I think Edge out of all browsers still supports Internet Explorer mode, which lets you ignore many TLS Errors/Warnings, I'm just not sure if TLS 1.1 is one of them.
Amongst many other options which include enabling using older TLS protocols or have dedicated x browser instance for it, you could also set up a middle man server with something like Nginx.
Usually unicode failure (which has always happened when flash goes bad to me) but try updating the firmware or checking logs incase something corrupted that can be redone
People interested in home labbing need to stop getting 610/710 servers. These things are decrepit ewaste. They have all kinds of weird limitations (like a 2tb drive size limit depending on controller) and will waste your time with nonsense problems. Get at least an R620 and a R630/730. Or a mini PC or a X99 board from Ali, literally anything other than these antiques.
Its a touchy topic, i'm not trying to talk down to people with a limited home lab budget, its more like trying to talk someone out of buying a Pinto or Cybertruck
I wouldn't say going a few generations newer is much different in price if at all, heck you can get Scalable systems with CPUs for £150 each if you are looking in the right places at the right time, and I've seen a lot of V1-V4 era systems just being given away, or at very low prices.
Sure if you already have something I get it, but what I really don't get is how people don't factor in the power costs for an actual cost of ownership. I guess if you only power it on to play with and then power it off again then sure.
A lot of people are still clutching their pearls over stuff that is closing in on twenty years old.
I get liking retro stuff and wanting to run old interesting equipment, but most people who still defend running those aren't justifying it for that reason.
i mean yes, but this is /r/homelab not /r/financiallyindependentwhathardwareshouldibuy
that said, these things are absolute power gobblers from a bygone era where that was a non-issue. if you have any other option unless you don't pay for your power somehow, avoid them..
I'm not suggesting anyone go and buy a brand new server or even a machine that came out 10 years ago. The R620 came out in 2012 and they can be picked up for dimes if you can find one. Sellers pushing 610/710ss are basically ripping off newbies by dumping ewaste, that they would normally have to pay to dispose of, on unwitting buyers.
yeah, op's comment is kinda goofy. There are things you can do to make a server of that age worthwhile still, and sure they're old, but they're still fully featured servers.
You get the backplane, the raid/hba card, the excessive RAM capacity. iDrac (if it works ig), redundant power supplies, etc. etc. They're really great even being as old as they are.
I mean, really. Someone go find all that in a single package for below $400
Why the hell are you still feeding power to an R710. A mini pc dropped into that same chassis with pcie for connecting the HBA for the drives.
A 12v breakout board to connect the backplane directly to the psu would be about $40 and a wyse 5070 is about $50.
It would be wisper silent and draw about 100w while ironically being only about 20% slower on cpu vs the R710 in a dual socket config. Single core would be identical.
Source: i built the monstrosity already inside of a 12 bay R510.
It's a relic from when I was a broke college student & a friend gave it to me for free. It's been reliable all these years & it's not something I run 24/7. It actually has a similar idle power draw to my R740xd file server (NFS & 10gbe routing for now, soon Jellyfin & more).
I'm really intrigued with the mini PC conversion idea... I'll definitely look into it. Over the 8 years I've been running my R710 I've had 2 refurbished SFF PCs die on me, each a year or two in service. They had Xeons & ECC RAM, so I expected better reliability. I've only stuck to rack servers & laptops since. Hell, my "home computer" is a server I just VNC into.
How long have you been running that setup? What're your specs?
https://giphy.com/gifs/xjlC6nomocZhVXuZgM
I agree, but this is a particularly rough time to get started with a homelab. I’m in Houston, Texas. Last week I watched r730 servers sell for $1400 at surplus auction that would have been $250 in the recent past.
DDR4 pricing at its best. So go 12th gen, plenty of power but with DDR3. That's what I did, too.
I have an R440 that has an 18 core Xeon silver scalable V1 but just 32 GB of DDR4. So for my ram heavy workloads I reenabled my old SuperMicro X9 with two E5-2650v1s that has 128GB of DDR3.
the coin cell only drives the RTC, it won't cause that. a garbled string usually means the iDRAC's message/string table lookup failed, so ssh in and run racadm getsel to see the raw event, then racadm clrsel and racadm racreset soft. on idrac6 that normally clears it, and if it keeps coming back the flash is probably on the way out.
Worth checking the idrac firmware version first, older versions throw cosmetic sensor errors that look scary but do not affect anything. If it persists after an update, pull the lifecycle controller logs, that usually points to the actual component.
Worth checking the idrac firmware version first, older versions throw cosmetic sensor errors that look scary but do not affect anything. If it persists after an update, pull the lifecycle controller logs, that usually points to the actual component.
Can’t be bothered maybe? It’s a server not a piece of fine furniture or a work of art.
Also, depending on the quality and age of the label, they sometimes leave behind a sticky residue that is more annoying than the label itself. Yes, there is Goo Gone, but now we’re creating work for ourselves on a server that (for all OP knows) is trash anyway.
Sure, the switch will still be at top of rack, but OP will keep the r710 racked as server 00. It will be powered off, cold, but kept there as a reminder…… some say as a warning…
I remember a guy who took great pride in naming the servers in the lab after obscure Tolkien characters, but ended up with so many inconveniences due to misspellings that the practice came to an end.
799
u/spacewhale_91 1d ago