Dell iDRAC6 Java Console Connection Timeout after OSX 10.13 Upgrade

My MacBook Air laptop crashed and as  a result had to reinstalled the whole so while doing that I thought why not upgrade to the newest OSX 10.13.4

Before doing that I was able to easily connect to a Dell R610 with it’s iDRAC6, and now I keep getting an error:

Connection Timeout

This what I’m using:

Dell R610 with iDRAC 6
MacBook Air running OSX 10.13.4

I do the same process as I have always, log into the iDRAC interface then launch the Java console.

After doing some research it appears my newly install Mac has Java 1.8, and that iDRAC only supports up to 1.7 which is what I previously had running.  So this is how I correct the issue and was able to easily use a small script to connect to the console without even needing to open a web browser.

Install Java 1.7

First we’re going to need to install Java 1.7 on your computer.

Download and install 1.7 Update 80 from Oracle’s Java website.

DRAC KVM Script

I cannot take credit for writing this script, this is something I found on one of the forums and thought I’d try it out since I was getting frustrated after my reinstall that I couldn’t log into support any machines.

Save this script on your computer.

#!/bin/bash
  
echo 'Host: '
read drachost

echo 'Username: '
read dracuser

echo 'Password: '
read -s dracpwd
echo

curl -O --insecure https://$drachost/software/avctKVM.jar

/usr/bin/java -cp avctKVM.jar -Djava.library.path=./lib com.avocent.idrac.kvm.Main ip=$drachost kmport=5900 vport=5900 user=$dracuser passwd=$dracpwd apcp=1 version=2 vmprivilege=true "helpurl=https://$drachost:443/help/contents.html"

After you have it save you can just run

$ sh dell-virtual-console.sh

Or whatever you called your script

This worked great for me.

I don’t even need to log into a server anymore, I can pull up the virtual console very quickly.  After I downloaded the jar file .I commented out that line so it didn’t need to download every single time.