unclear when config values are stored/used/etc.

[zenfish]

Perhaps the pyipmi.conf file should be updated only on successful attempts? I'm not sure the big win on caching the last unsuccessful attempt. In addition once it's written to, it seems to not fill in values for sections that aren't valid/just defaults, like after a -I lanplus command the -I lan gets filled in with nonsense.

The using cached passwords is interesting... I'm on the fence myself, but if you're going to do it, I'd say you may as well go all the way, and save for individual IPs/hosts within the various interfaces, like:

[lan]

     [10.0.0.1]
        user = root
        password = root123
        auth = md5
        port = 623

    [192.0.168.1]
        user = admin
        password = admin
        auth = md5
        port = 666
....

(Maybe have a --dangerous flag to save passwords for all hosts ;))

You could also put behavior variables in the [global] section, like [always-force], [CIPHER_SUITE], [port] (can be overridden by individual targets), etc., etc.

(I'm not sure what the no_ping option means.)