Dell PowerEdge R610 - IDRAC 6 Virtual Console on MacOS

30 Sep 2021 on Hardware, Java, Macos

For those with older Dell hardware seeking a reliable way to access and use the iDRAC Virtual Console, you’ve come to the right place!

Sep 21, 2022 - Update: You can use this simple script to start the virtual console directly, only requirement is having Java installed.

The iDRAC Virtual Console uses Java Web Start (JWS), which was deprecated in Java 9, and starting with Java 11, Oracle completely removed JWS from their JDK distributions.

Below you will find instruction on how to get everything working again with the help of OpenWebStart.

Requirements

• OpenWebStart

Instructions

1. Install OpenWebStart from the link above.

2. Go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy and in Accessibility add OpenWebStart javaws.

3. Open the iDRAC web interface and navigate to: System > Properties > System Summary.

4. On the Virtual Console Preview widget go to Options: Settings and uncheck Video Encryption Enabled.

5. Navagate back to System > Properties > System Summary and click Launch on the on the Virtual Console Preview widget, this will download a jpnl file that you should rename each time you download it to viewer.jpnl or something similar.

6. Right click the file and select Get Info, set Open with to OpenWebStart javaws and click change all. This will make sure the jpnl files are always opened with OpenWebStart.

7. Right click again and this time open the file to start the virtual console.

8. If you get the message Connection failed. run the sed command below, it will remove RC4, what the viewer needs, from the disabled TLS algorithm list in the java.security configuration of all Java VM’s in ~/.cache/icedtea-web/jvm-cache/.

    sed -i 's/jdk.tls.disabledAlgorithms=\(.*\) RC4,\(.*\)/jdk.tls.disabledAlgorithms=\1\2/' ~/.cache/icedtea-web/jvm-cache/*/conf/security/java.security
   

9. That is it to get the virtual console working.