How To Install redfishtool on Ubuntu
Posted on April 1, 2023 (Last modified on May 20, 2023 )
4 minutes • 734 words
Introduction
In this tutorial we learn how to install redfishtool on Ubuntu.
What is redfishtool
redfishtool is:
Redfishtool is a commandline tool that implements the client side of the Redfish RESTful API for Data Center Hardware Management.
Redfish is the new RESTful API for hardware management defined by the DMTF Scalable Platform Management Forum (SPMF). It provides a modern, secure, multi-node, extendable interface for doing hardware management. The initial release included hardware inventory, server power-on/off/reset, reading power draw, setting power limits, reading sensors such as fans, read/write of ID LEDs, asset tags, and went beyond IPMI in functionality to include inventory of processors, storage, Ethernet controllers, and total memory. New Redfish extensions have now been added to the spec and include firmware update, BIOS config, memory inventory, direct attached storage control, and the list grows.
redfishtool makes it simple to use the Redfish API from a BASH script or interactively from a client command shell.
While other generic HTTP clients such as Linux curl can send and receive Redfish requests, redfishtool goes well beyond these generic HTTP clients by automatically handling many of the hypermedia and Redfish-specific protocol aspects of the Redfish API that require a client to often execute multiple queries to a redfish service to walk the hypermedia links from the redfish root down to the detailed URI of a specific resource (eg Processor-2 of Blade-4 in a computer blade system). Specifically, redfishtool provides the following functions over curl:
- implements Redfish Session Authentication as well as HTTP Basic Auth
- walks the Redfish schema following strict interoperpbility processors…] to find the targeted instance based on Id, UUID, URL or other attributes
- handles GETs for collections that are returned in multiple pieces-requiring client to read in a loop until the full collection is returned
- handles ETag and If-Match headers when PATCHing a resource to write properties
- implements many common set or action operations with simple commandline syntax (eg server reset, setting LEDs, assetTag, powerLimits, etc)
- negotiates the latest redfish protocol version between client and service (demonstrating the proper way to do this)
- can read specific properties of a resource, or expand collections to include all members of the collection expanded
- supports adding and deleting users, and common Redfish account service operations
- For debug, provides multiple levels of verbose output to add descriptive headers, and show what HTTP requests are being executed
- For debug, includes multiple levels of status display showing HTTP status codes and headers returned and sent
- For easy parsing, outputs all responses in JSON format unless verbose or status debug options were specified
There are three methods to install redfishtool on Ubuntu. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.
Install redfishtool Using apt-get
Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.
sudo apt-get update
After updating apt database, We can install redfishtool using apt-get by running the following command:
sudo apt-get -y install redfishtool
Install redfishtool Using apt
Update apt database with apt using the following command.
sudo apt update
After updating apt database, We can install redfishtool using apt by running the following command:
sudo apt -y install redfishtool
Install redfishtool Using aptitude
If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.
sudo aptitude update
After updating apt database, We can install redfishtool using aptitude by running the following command:
sudo aptitude -y install redfishtool
How To Uninstall redfishtool on Ubuntu
To uninstall only the redfishtool package we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get remove redfishtool
Uninstall redfishtool And Its Dependencies
To uninstall redfishtool and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu, we can use the command below:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove redfishtool
Remove redfishtool Configurations and Data
To remove redfishtool configuration and data from Ubuntu we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y purge redfishtool
Remove redfishtool configuration, data, and all of its dependencies
We can use the following command to remove redfishtool configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge redfishtool
Dependencies
redfishtool have the following dependencies:
References
Summary
In this tutorial we learn how to install redfishtool package on Ubuntu using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.