racadm is Dell's command-line tool for the iDRAC/DRAC out-of-band controller. It runs locally, over SSH to the controller, or remotely with -r. See also ipmitool for the vendor-neutral route.

Reset the controller when it hangs¶

ssh [email protected] 'racadm racreset soft'

A soft reset restarts the management controller only, not the server.

SSH public-key login for a DRAC user¶

Create a key on the management workstation. Use a modern key type; very old DRAC firmware may only accept RSA, in which case use a 2048-bit or larger RSA key rather than the 1024-bit one older guides suggest:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -f ~/.ssh/drac
cat ~/.ssh/drac.pub

Add the key to a DRAC user slot (-i is the user index, -k the key slot 1-4):

racadm sshpkauth -i 2 -k 1 -t "$(cat ~/.ssh/drac.pub)"

Then ssh -i ~/.ssh/drac [email protected] logs in without a password. Keep the DRAC on an isolated management network and keep its firmware current.