At home, my regular server would previously have been built from consumer (PC) hardware running Ubuntu Linux. I use it mainly as a NAS and also for some virtual-machine type stuff.

I recently picked up my first enterprise-level (old) machine. It's an HP ML150 Gen 9. It seems to be about 7 years old, but I have upgraded it so it is still a fairly high-spec machine. Duel Xeons and plenty of RAM for my needs.

My usual setup procedure would be to enable boot from USB in the bios and then install Ubuntu from there. Once done, let it get an IP address from the router, set it as static and I'm good to go.

Enter HPE iLo...
iLo is a piece of embedded software designed to allow you to manage the server through a monitor attached to the machine or through a web interface. From here I was able to create the arrays for my drives and then set the boot order to USB. I inserted the drive and rebooted. Ubuntu was installed with no issue. (kinda)

When I try and shell into the Ubuntu Server I get the iLo terminal. I am not sure how I go about getting directly into the Ubuntu machine. It gets a little bit stranger. On my Linux computer if I access the terminal and run ssh ip.add.re.ss I get iLo, but if I do the same thing in Putty I get Ubuntu (where I want to be).

I now have the system set up so that it boots up and launches Ubuntu Server, but I am kinda lost about enabling SSH directly to the OS rather than the HPE management software. I have read about disabling iLo in the bios, but I am not sure this would be a good idea because I currently use iLo to manage my logical drives. I know this could all be done within Ubuntu using mdadm, but this would prevent the server from displaying the failure and warning lights on the drive caddies.

The system has two NIC ports and I have a cable for each running to the router. I can see two IP addresses being issued to the machine. I experience the same problem when trying to use either of these IPs. Ubuntu only sees one IP (as expected) when I run "ifconfig". I can also successfully receive pings and ping out from the Ubuntu install.

Anyone else been in a similar situation and have a solution, or do we have any iLo experts in the house :-)

Mack.