This is what I had to do to get some temperature reading from a Dell P850 in Ubuntu Linux.

Loading the IPMI kernel modules

root@server:~# modprobe ipmi_devintf
root@server:~# modprobe ipmi_si

Creating the device unless it’s already made
(I.e. if /dev/ipmi0 doesn’t already exist, do this step.)

root@server:~# mknod /dev/ipmi0 c 252 0

Installing the tools and reading temperatures

This will install the ipmitool package

root@server:~# apt-get install ipmitool

Read temperatures

root@server:~# ipmitool sdr type Temp
Temp | 01h | ok | 3.1 | 38 degrees C
Planar Temp | 04h | ok | 7.1 | 28 degrees C
Temp Interface | 53h | ns | 7.1 | Disabled

I wrote a munin plugin to parse and graph this too, shout if it’s interesting!