Garry Dolley

Garry Dolley

The Captain of the Ship

Overview

This one really frustrated me, but I knew I had to find a solution, and it wasn’t going to be “Run Windows in a VM on your laptop.” That just sounded stupid. But nevertheless, as our technology advances and support for old Java applets wanes, getting esoteric things like an iLO2 video console working on Linux in 2020 seems next to impossible.

This wasn’t so much of an issue with my old laptop, a ThinkPad T520 running an old version of Ubuntu, namely Trusty (14.04). Before you judge me, let me just say, I use laptops like old Toyotas; I don’t replace them until they are damn near falling apart. Really, that tried and true T520 had an “A” key that would sometimes pop off…

And while I could have just gone to my closet and pulled out this old laptop, just to access the console of one of our old HP servers, just this one time, I really wanted to have a modern solution. So, I went down this rabbit hole, burned a few hours, but ultimately was successful and I am proud to share what I discovered.

First things first, I can’t even login to an iLO2 remote management service at all in today’s Chrome, it’ll complain about SSL and quit with ERR_SSL_BAD_RECORD_MAC_ALERT, so using Chrome is out of the picture.

It works fine in Firefox though; I can login and use most of the tools, except for the Java-based remote console. As of September, 2018, Firefox dropped support for the technology to run Java applets.

So if you’re running a modern Firefox, you’re shit-out-of-luck. However, there is good news. You can install and run an older version of Firefox, from the ESR line (Extended Support Release), and support for Java applets will be there, and the iLO2 console will work. You’ll need an ESR version up to or below 52ESR, and then an old version of Java 7, and I’ll show you below how to get all those things working on Arch Linux (my preferred desktop OS on my ThinkPad X1 Carbon).

Install Firefox ESR

This part is not so bad, but you’ll have to edit your PKGBUILD a bit because the latest ESR version at the time of this writing is too new. You need 52 or below. I use trizen for my AUR packages. If you’re using something else, you’ll have to adapt my method below to your prefered tool.

  • Install Firefox ESR (binary)

      $ trizen -S firefox-esr-bin

  • Edit PKGBUILD

    You will want to edit the PKGBUILD file according to the diff below.

    --- PKGBUILD    2019-12-23 04:57:07.070017439 -0800
+++ PKGBUILD-new        2019-12-23 04:58:52.850018080 -0800
@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@

 pkgname=firefox-esr-bin
 _pkgname=${pkgname/-bin/}
-pkgver=68.3.0
+pkgver=52.6.0
 pkgrel=1
 pkgdesc='Standalone web browser from mozilla.org - Extended Support Release'
 url='http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/'
@@ -18,22 +18,23 @@
 license=('MPL' 'GPL' 'LGPL')
 install=$_pkgname.install

-sha512sums=('aadfdd64f10d5f9b97dda227793a6db3b73913f986c2f826ddcc3568f9a9e63ad3fe73d04dcb2cfe27ab854ef048faef3546621b3de731f5a5478c7c551df33a'
+sha512sums=('b521611ace3731aea3e1cc7abb74f01a4885f5325da359a25a6a295316541c4e1e4cb7cf1be104cbb199acc15d57eeb8a37e2e8adf4e53f7ddf284f9d81a047f'
             'c585f6e8ac7abfc96ad4571940b6f0dcc3f7331a18a518b4fe5d19b45e4c2d96c394524ea5c115c8fdd256c9229ea2fabeb1fc04ca7102f1626fd20728aef47d'
             'ab2fa2e08c7a65ac0bfe169a4b579e54b038bddabf838cd3df5ab341bd77be7c101092d0123598944d2174ab3a8fbc70dfbd692b2944016efdb7a69216a74428')
 [[ "$CARCH" == "i686" ]] && sha512sums[0]='cb72fa6f7a6106fefa124dfdc2f8dc6df26a27defeb93d5683f744eb47343cdfb5e39727b16678f479c57a05d09d9358a811950d42635f57bba2cf0e94ed8412'

     ln -s /opt/$_pkgname/firefox $pkgdir/usr/bin/$_pkgname
     install -m644 $srcdir/{$_pkgname.desktop,$_pkgname-safe.desktop} $pkgdir/usr/share/applications/
-       install -m644 $srcdir/firefox/browser/chrome/icons/default/default128.png $pkgdir/usr/share/pixmaps/$_pkgname.png
+       install -m644 $srcdir/firefox/browser/chrome/icons/default/default48.png $pkgdir/usr/share/pixmaps/$_pkgname.png
 }

    With the above changes, we accomplish the following:

    1. Downgrade the Firefox version

    2. Insert the correct SHA512 checksum for the downgraded binary package

      For reference, I found the SHA512SUM for the binary file by painstakingly looking for the correct version, architecture and language in the SHA512SUMS file for the release we’re trying to install.

    3. Don’t ask me why that icon isn’t there.

  • Build the package

    If everything goes smooth with your changes above, the Firefox ESR binary package will be built and when you’re prompted to install it, just proceed to do so.

    If things don’t go smoothly and you need to try again, see the next section.

  • OPTIONAL: How to retry the build if things go wrong

    If something goes wrong, you can save time by going into the build directory, tweaking anything you need, and building again manually as follows:

    $ cd /tmp/trizen-$USER/firefox-esr-bin

# Make tweaks, etc...

$ makepkg

    Once makepkg completes successfully, you’ll have a package file that Arch Linux can install using regular ol’ pacman:

    $ sudo pacman -U firefox-esr-bin-52.6.0-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz

Install the Java 7 Runtime Environment (JRE7)

To install an old version of the Oracle Java 7 Runtime Environment, which is EOL (end of life / support), perform the steps below. Note though, that the first part will fail, and that is normal. It’s because Oracle doesn’t let you just download the Java runtimes, you have to agree to their license, or terms, or something legal that nobody cares about but the lawyers.

But not only that, you have to login to Oracle’s site. This is annoying but not necessarily an obstacle, because you can sign up for a free account right on the spot.

  • Install JRE7 package

      $ trizen -S jre7

    This will fail, as noted above, but you’ll get the directory structure in place that you need for the remaining steps in this section.

  • Download JRE7 runtime from Oracle’s site

    The trizen command above will tell you which URL to go to (I would have pasted it here, but I honestly forgot it). Once there, you’ll want to get the file: jre-7u80-linux-x64.tar.gz

    When you try to download this file, it’ll make you go through a dance of accepting something legal, signing up for a free Oracle account, etc…

    It sucks, but just accept the pain.

    Once you finally have the file, proceed to the next step.

  • Install JRE7 package (again)

    Now you can perform the following:

    $ cp ~/Downloads/jre-7u80-linux-x64.tar.gz ~/trizen-$USER/jre7/
$ trizen -S jre7

    This should complete successfully now and you’ll have a working version of the old Java 7 runtime.

Add iLO2 to the Security Exceptions

This will help with you not getting blasted with a million popups about security problems.

  • Start the Java Control Panel

      $ /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-jre/jre/bin/ControlPanel

  • Confirm exceptions

    Navigate to: Security -> Edit Site List

    Add your iLO2 server URLs to the list. For example, https://192.168.1.2

Configure JRE7 for Firefox

Note: I didn’t actually have to do this step, the symlink was already present. But for completeness, I’m including this part because the reference I used as a guide for this whole madness also included it, so…

  • Manual symlink (optional)

    You only need to perform this step if the symlink isn’t already present.

      $ cd /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
  $ sudo rm libnpjp*
  $ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-jre/jre/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so

Run Firefox ESR

  • Execute the correct binary

    This part may seem obvious, but I would like to point out one caveat I found. First of all, to run Firefox ESR, just execute the following:

    $ firefox-esr

    But, if you have the regular version of Firefox already installed, this might actually end up simply running that version, by default, and I don’t really know why. This happened to me a couple times and I didn’t even notice at first. Eventually, I ran the following instead:

    $ /opt/firefox-esr/firefox

    and that opened the right version. Don’t ask me why. The file /usr/bin/firefox-esr simply symlinks to this one in /opt so it should be the same, but whatever…

  • Verify the Java plugin is installed

    Navigate to about:addons

    You should see “Java(TM) Plug-in 10.80.2” in the list.

Open iLO2

Open your iLO page as you normally would and start the remote console. You may need to confirm further security exceptions.

If you get a ClassNotFoundException, don’t panic, just click once on the applet where the remote console should be and it’ll download what it needs. I only had to do this once, then never again.

And that’s it!

You should see your server’s video console in your browser and you can interact with it as you normally would, like in the old days, or on an old laptop/desktop.

A Better Way

If you’re still with me, I thank you for your patience. This process is rather long and I wish accessing out-of-band consoles on physical hardware wasn’t always such a pain in the ass. Why can’t someone make a decent remote console?!

One of the biggest reasons we developed our ARP Thunder™ Cloud Dedicated Server product several years ago over at ARP Networks was to provided a solution to this problem. Get the resources of a dedicated server, but be able to manage it with the ease of a virtual machine, especially with regards to out-of-band (OOB) management.

With ARP Thunder™, you can get a video-based OOB management console by simply clicking “View Console” in our Portal, which works in any modern web browser without any plugins required. You can also get a serial-based OOB management console over SSH.

How cool is that?! :)

References

I owe much of my success in getting the iLO2 console working in Linux to the following post: Use HP iLO2 Remote Console with Linux in 2018

Comments

You May Also Enjoy