Skip to content

ipmi-sel: Ignore auto-generated "Event Logging Disabled / Log area reset/cleared" entry after ipmitool sel clear #982

@mschuster75

Description

@mschuster75

Describe the solution you'd like

The ipmi-sel plugin permanently reports a WARN state if the BMC creates the
following SEL entry after running ipmitool sel clear:

Event Logging Disabled SEL ; Log area reset/cleared ; Asserted

Many BMC implementations (Lenovo, Supermicro, Dell, HPE, …) always insert this
entry immediately after the SEL is cleared. It is purely informational and
indicates that the System Event Log was reset. Vendors document this as
“information only; no action required”.

This leads to constant WARN alerts even though the SEL contains no real events.


Current Behavior

  • ipmitool sel elist returns exactly one entry:
    Event Logging Disabled SEL ; Log area reset/cleared ; Asserted
  • The plugin treats any existing SEL line as a warning → STATE_WARN.

From a monitoring perspective this is a false positive, because the event is not
an actual hardware issue.


Expected Behavior

  • The plugin should ignore this specific auto-generated event.
  • If only this entry is present → report OK.
  • If any other SEL entries exist → report WARN as before.

Proposed Patch

A minimal filter inside main() solves the problem:

def is_ignored_sel_line(line: str) -> bool:
    return (
        'Event Logging Disabled SEL' in line
        and 'Log area reset/cleared' in line
    )

relevant_lines = []
for line in stdout.splitlines():
    if not line.strip():
        continue
    if is_ignored_sel_line(line):
        continue
    relevant_lines.append(line)

if not relevant_lines:
    lib.base.oao('Everything is ok.', STATE_OK)

### Additional context

_No response_

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    enhancementNew feature or request

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions