Tag Archives: IcedTea

Java IDRAC 6 Ubuntu 18.04 setup

I recently acquired a Dell PowerEdge R610 and had a hard time getting its iDRAC to work properly on my ElementaryOS setup (Ubuntu 18.04 derivative.) I had two problems: Connection failed error and keyboard not working.

Connection Failed

After much searching I finally found this post:

https://mindlesstux.com/2018/06/21/fix-for-java-8-idrac-6-connection-failed/

The post explains the problem is with the security settings of Java 8+ preventing the connection. I didn’t know where my security file was so I first ran a quick find command to find it:

sudo find / -name java.security

In my case it was located in /etc/java-11-openjdk/security/java.security

The last step was to remove RC4 from the list of blacklisted ciphers, as this is the cause of the problem.

sudo vim /etc/java-11-openjdk/security/java.security

#change jdk.tls.disabledAlgorithms=SSLv3, RC4, DES, MD5withRSA, DH keySize < 1024, \ to be:
jdk.tls.disabledAlgorithms=SSLv3, DES, MD5withRSA, DH keySize < 1024, \

Save and exit, and iDRAC will now load!

Except now…

Keyboard doesn’t work

Update 2022-04-13 I recently had an issue where the keyboard didn’t work despite having Java 8. I fixed it by going to Tools and checking “Pass all keystrokes to server” within the jvm window.

My system was defaulting to using JRE 11, which apparently causes the keyboard to not function at all. I found on this reddit post that you really need an older version of Java. To do so on Ubuntu 18.04 you need to install it along with the icedtea plugin and run update-alternatives

sudo apt install openjdk-8-jre icedtea-8-plugin

Edit /etc/java-8-openjdk/security/java.security and remove the restriction on the RC4 algorhythm. Then configure the system to run java 8:

sudo update-alternatives --config java
#select java 8

Lastly, configure the icedtea plugin to run Java 8 instead of 11, because for some reason this plugin ignores the system java settings. Launch the IcedTea Web Control panel (find it in your system menu) and then Navigate to JVM settings. Enter /usr/ in the section “Set JVM for IcedTea-Web – working best with OpenJDK” section. Then hit Apply / OK

Phew. FINALLY you should be able to use iDRAC 6 on your modern Ubuntu system.

Fix icedtea Cannot grant permissions to unsigned jars error

I banged my head on a wall for a while before I finally found a fix to this one. OpenJDK8 has new security features that break compatibility with the IPMI interfaces of my older servers. The problem in my case stemmed from the fact that the java applet is signed, just with an algorhythm that JDK8 blacklists. So, I had to remove MD5 from the blacklisted algorhythms to get this to work. Thanks to this site for guidance on how to do this.

Per that site, this is what I did to fix the issue:

Find the java.security file. In my case it is located in /usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64/jre/lib/security/java.security

Then find the row:

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jdk.jar.disabledAlgorithms=MD2, MD5, RSA keySize < 1024

Comment it out, copy it, delete the MD5 string.

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#jdk.jar.disabledAlgorithms=MD2, MD5, RSA keySize < 1024
jdk.jar.disabledAlgorithms=MD2, RSA keySize < 1024