Okay, and the iLO 3 firmware in the SPP 2012.10 release is still 1.5, so you're pretty current there. Don't know what's in SPP 2012.12 though.
What ProLiant server model? Guess only thing I can think of at this point is to try power cycling the iLO itself (i.e. remove all power to the server for about 30 seconds then reconnect power or rerack the blade), as I've never seen this kind of issue. I just tried to reproduce your issue on a an BL460c G7 with an iLO 3 which also has firmware 1.5 and couldn't produce that error.
Did you by chance do a "tail -f /var/log/... &" (with the ampersand at the end) to put it in the background?