HPE Lights-Out Standalone Remote Console for Windows (HPLOCONS)

What works

Tested with a ProLiant G7 server, iLO 3, firmware version 1.94. iLO 4 and 5 not tested.

All features that work under Windows also work under Wine (with the workarounds below):

- Remote display
- Keyboard and mouse input
- Power Switch actions (all)
- Virtual Drives: mount folder (slightly unstable)
- Virtual Drives: mount and boot ISO image (netboot.xyz.iso)
- Virtual Drives: mount and boot USB image (netboot.xyz.img)
- Keyboard shortcuts (all)
- Video recording and playback

Not working at all, even under Windows 10:

- Virtual Drives: mount from URL (HTTP and HTTPS)

What does not

TLS handshake fails with default GnuTLS configuration.

The "Virtual Drives" dropdown menu does not appear.

Workarounds

Installed dotnet462 and corefonts via winetricks.

iLO 3 requires legacy TLS ciphers 3DES and RC4 to be allowed (see documentation). Leveraged the fix for Bug 53344 in Wine >= 7.13 to provide the runtime environment with a GnuTLS priority override file, to include legacy ciphers in the list of allowed ciphers.

Added missing registry keys to allow for enumeration of disks to fix the "Virtual Drives" menu.

What was not tested

-

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU: Other
• Driver: unknown

Additional Comments

Tested on Debian/Whonix with a ProLiant G7 server, iLO 3, firmware version 1.94.

1. Install wine >= 7.13 from WineHQ repos, wget and cabextract using your distro's package manager and latest winetricks using the instructions from Github. Installing Wine from your distro's repositories may also work, if recent versions are available and 32-bit packages are enabled.
2. Download the HPLOCONS installer: 

   wget https://downloads.hpe.com/pub/softlib2/software1/pubsw-windows/p390407056/v138774/Setup.exe
   

3. Set up prefix (cancel the mono installer dialog): 

       mkdir -p ~/.local/share/wineprefixes  
       env WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.local/share/wineprefixes/hplocons wineboot --init
       env WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.local/share/wineprefixes/hplocons winetricks -q dotnet462 corefonts
   

4. Install HPLOCONS:

   env WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.local/share/wineprefixes/hplocons wine Setup.exe
   

5. Allow legacy TLS ciphers via GnuTLS priority string override (this is one command):

   tee ~/.local/share/wineprefixes/hplocons/gnutls_config <<EOF
   [overrides]
   default-priority-string = NORMAL:+3DES-CBC:+ARCFOUR-128
   EOF
   

6. Add registry keys to fix virtual drives menu:

   env WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.local/share/wineprefixes/hplocons wine reg add "HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\disk\Enum" /v Count /t REG_DWORD /d 0
   env WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.local/share/wineprefixes/hplocons wine reg add "HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\disk\Enum" /v NextInstance /t REG_DWORD /d 0
   

7. Run HPLOCONS with legacy cipersuites enabled:

   env WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.local/share/wineprefixes/hplocons GNUTLS_SYSTEM_PRIORITY_FILE=~/.local/share/wineprefixes/hplocons/gnutls_config wine start 'C:\Program Files\Hewlett Packard Enterprise\HPE iLO Integrated Remote Console\HPLOCONS.exe'
   

Troubleshooting:

If TLS connections fail with iLO 3, you may have to downgrade GnuTLS-related packages, if they were updated after wine, or wait for the next wine version. Refer to the list of dependencies for the wine packages on your system; for example, on Debian, libcurl3-gnutls was updated after wine 7.14.

If TLS connections fail with iLO 4 or 5, try dotnet471, dotnet472 or dotnet48 together with native d3dcompiler_47 via winetricks.

wine requires ptrace capabilities. If you changed kernel.yama.ptrace_scope or run a hardened distro like Whonix or Kicksecure (see this), capabilities need to be set explicitly for wineserver:

sudo setcap cap_sys_ptrace+eip /opt/wine-stable/bin/wineserver

If your system locale is zh_CN, you may have to add LC_ALL=C to the environment variables when running the app. See bug 47277.

On the choice of .NET Framework version:

HPLOCONS as of version 1.3.1 requires .NET 4.5 or later for TLS 1.1 and 1.2 support.
.NET 4.5.x fails to install via winetricks (as of August 2022), .NET 4.6.x works.
With wine 7.13, .NET 4.7.x and 4.8.x need native d3dcompiler_47 via winetricks to display the GUI correctly.