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Flashing an LSI 9211-8i RAID Card to IT Mode for ZFS/Software RAID (Tutorial)

You will have multiple prompts requiring a yes to initiate a flash, there won't be any 'oops' that you haven't said yes to a couple of times.

Right, you will be asked for confirmation before you actually do anything IIRC

(it's been a while, so my memory is slightly hazy).

I think he might have been asking more about his M/B though (so, if trying to run

an incorrect EFI shell might screw up the board's BIOS or sth like that), not sure.

In any case, trying to run an incompatible EFI shell should only result in errors,

no damage. :)

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Thanks for the answers.

 

I've just tried with the X64, with the file being called "shell.efi" and I came all the way to this step.

As you can see from the picture I managed to get into the right USB drive, even though my OS (Debian) is installed on an USB drive as well.

 

Everything looked good so I proceeded with following command.

 

 

sas2flash.efi -o -e 6

Unfortunately I don't have a picture of the text it posted but it basically said it couldn't run the command as no LSI adapter were found.

The LEDs on the IBM ServeRAID M1015 were on, so it definitely had power and when I was launching the system this were shown. I think it's safe to say the M1015 was connected and recognized by the system.

 

I tried to run this command as well, just to see if it would make any difference but nothing.

 

 

sas2flash.efi -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom

 

 

What could be the solution or the reason that it wouldn't run the command?

Do I have the wrong files or am I even in the right EFI Shell interface?

 

Cheers Shaqalac.

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Thanks for the answers.

 

I've just tried with the X64, with the file being called "shell.efi" and I came all the way to this step.

That looks good. :)

 

Everything looked good so I proceeded with following command.

Unfortunately I don't have a picture of the text it posted but it basically said it couldn't run the command as no LSI adapter were found.

Hm. What do you get when you enter

sas2flash.efi -listall
?

If nothing shows up for that command, it might just be that the sas2flash.efi utility

is not compatible with the M1015.

The LEDs on the IBM ServeRAID M1015 were on, so it definitely had power and when I was launching the system this were shown. I think it's safe to say the M1015 was connected and recognized by the system.

Yup, looks good to me. From the picture I see that it shows up as an

MR9240-8i card, so it does seem a bit strange that the sas2flash.efi

utility does not recogize the card. However, I have encountered this

error myself as well when I used a flashing software that was not

compatible with my controller, it might just be that you need a different

flashing tool than sas2flash.efi (not sure which one at the moment

though, I recommend googling around to see if anything shows up).

 

I tried to run this command as well, just to see if it would make any difference but nothing.

Yeah, it wouldn't work. The first command clears the card and prepares it for

re-flashing, the second command updates the card's BIOS and loads the new

firmware. If you can't remove the old ones, you can't load the new ones. That's

why it's kinda dangerous if anything bad happens between these two commands

as you have removed the old firmware and BIOS and haven't loaded the new ones

yet, so you could end up with a dead card.

 

What could be the solution or the reason that it wouldn't run the command?

Do I have the wrong files or am I even in the right EFI Shell interface?

You're in the EFI shell, nice and proper. As said it looks like a compatibility

issue to me.

I don't have too much time today as it's my grandma's birthday (85, yay!), but

I'll see if I can find something on this tomorrow if you haven't solved it by

then.

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That looks good. :)

At least I've downloaded the right shell.

 

Hm. What do you get when you enter

sas2flash.efi -listall
?

If nothing shows up for that command, it might just be that the sas2flash.efi utility

is not compatible with the M1015.

Same story, now I got a picture of it though, sorry for the very bad quality.

 

Yup, looks good to me. From the picture I see that it shows up as an

MR9240-8i card, so it does seem a bit strange that the sas2flash.efi

utility does not recogize the card. However, I have encountered this

error myself as well when I used a flashing software that was not

compatible with my controller, it might just be that you need a different

flashing tool than sas2flash.efi (not sure which one at the moment

though, I recommend googling around to see if anything shows up).

I did some googling on "No LSI SAS adapters found! Limited Command Set Available!" and found this guy (#55). He seems to have the same exact problem as me, he has a IBM M1015 and have tried with the sas2flash.efi, without success. Apparently his solution was to make a MS DOS bootable USB stick with this tool and then go back to these instructions as he at first followed. I can't follow the exact same instructions as the post is pretty old and we are on P18 now I think. Should be able to download the files off LSI's website though.

 

 

I don't have too much time today as it's my grandma's birthday (85, yay!), but

I'll see if I can find something on this tomorrow if you haven't solved it by

then.

As mentioned above I did some googling and might have some possible solutions, will return as soon as possible if I've found the solution.

 

Congratulations and enjoy the evening with your family!

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UPDATE: Added some screenshots to the original post from a flash I did last week.

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I've tried with a MS DOS bootable USB stick as suggested here with following files transferred to the drive.

  • 2118it.bin
  • mptsas2.rom
  • sas2flash.efi
  • Shell.efi

Unfortunately I forgot to take a screenshot last night but it just displayed an error (Bad command or file name) when I typed sas2flash.efi -o -e 6.

I think the next step is to try the sas2flsh.efi instead as done in this guide, if that doesn't work I think I need to look a bit more into these commands and what files might come with them.

  • megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
  • megarec -cleanflash 0

Added error text and further thoughts.

 

I'm considering to ditch your guide (sorry) as I can't seem to get it to work and follow a guide that uses a DOS bootable drive. I've been thinking about this one as there has been referred to it other places as well but the files that I should download is outdated by far.

 

I wont recognize this LSI card as you saw from my previous pictures, so I think the DOS bootable drive is the way to go. At the moment I'm just stucked at old files and kind of lost in general...

Edited by Shaqalac

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I've tried with a MS DOS bootable USB stick as suggested here with following files transferred to the drive.

  • 2118it.bin
  • mptsas2.rom
  • sas2flash.efi
  • Shell.efi
Unfortunately I forgot to take a screenshot last night but it just displayed an error (Bad command or file name) when I typed sas2flash.efi -o -e 6.

Yeah, that makes sense actually. An EFI application is a binary that only

runs in an EFI environment AFAIK, it wouldn't run in a DOS shell. Same thing

the other way around, I don't think you can run normal *.exe files in an EFI

shell (haven't tried it personally though).

I think the next step is to try the sas2flsh.efi instead as done in this guide, if that doesn't work I think I need to look a bit more into these commands and what files might come with them.

  • megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
  • megarec -cleanflash 0
Added error text and further thoughts.

 

I'm considering to ditch your guide (sorry) as I can't seem to get it to work and follow a guide that uses a DOS bootable drive. I've been thinking about this one as there has been referred to it other places as well but the files that I should download is outdated by far.

 

I wont recognize this LSI card as you saw from my previous pictures, so I think the DOS bootable drive is the way to go. At the moment I'm just stucked at old files and kind of lost in general...

NP, if it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work. I actually went for the DOS route

too before trying the EFI way, but for me that didn't work. I ran into an error due

to my board having a "Limited Option ROM", so I couldn't run the necessary tools.

Otherwise I wouldn't have spent the hours trying to figure out how the heck I can

get the EFI stuff to work. :D

Wiki article on option ROM.

Unfortunately that error is not solvable, so I needed to find another way, hence

why I ended up on the EFI route.

If you do try the DOS way and manage to get it working, feel free to report back

how you managed success, I'd be happy to add the info to the guide.

Best of luck! :)

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Yeah, that makes sense actually. An EFI application is a binary that only

runs in an EFI environment AFAIK, it wouldn't run in a DOS shell. Same thing

the other way around, I don't think you can run normal *.exe files in an EFI

shell (haven't tried it personally though).

Some research after my fail showed this as well, which give some sense to the error, or the reason of it rather. It was a bit of a rushed solution, making a MS DOS drive and try to boot the same files from it, work of my frustration I guess.

 

 

NP, if it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work. I actually went for the DOS route

too before trying the EFI way, but for me that didn't work. I ran into an error due

to my board having a "Limited Option ROM", so I couldn't run the necessary tools.

Otherwise I wouldn't have spent the hours trying to figure out how the heck I can

get the EFI stuff to work. :D

Wiki article on option ROM.

Unfortunately that error is not solvable, so I needed to find another way, hence

why I ended up on the EFI route.

If you do try the DOS way and manage to get it working, feel free to report back

how you managed success, I'd be happy to add the info to the guide.

Best of luck! :)

Can you remember if the error was or similar to "ERROR: Failed to initialize PAL. Exiting program."?

I tried to transfer sas2flsh.exe to the MS DOS drive and did following:

  • Boot from DOS USB stick.
  • Typed:

    sas2flsh -o -e -6

  • Got this error: ERROR: Failed to initialize PAL. Exiting program.

Can remember if I've linked this one before or not, nevertheless from this article I saw the writer got the same error.

 

 

I booted from the SD card and attempted to run sas2flsh but was met with an error: “ERROR: Failed to initialize PAL. Exiting program.” Fortunately, article 16266 mentions the error at the end and directs you to article 15807. The gist of article 15807 is that Intel 3000 or 5000-based boards have optionROM limitations which cause the above error. The easiest solution is to use a different system. Alternately, you can use the UEFI installer.

It worries me a bit as my card didn't got recognized in the UEFI and this article suggests that if you get this error the easy solutions is to find an UEFI alternative.

 

One of my main problems as well is that I can get an image on the screen every time I turn the computer on, this it's because the LSI card isn't flashed yet, at least that was what my research showed. So to figure out whether a small change or not is making the difference or not can take a lot of time, which turns into frustrations.

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Can you remember if the error was or similar to "ERROR: Failed to initialize PAL. Exiting program."?

I tried to transfer sas2flsh.exe to the MS DOS drive and did following:

  • Boot from DOS USB stick.
  • Typed:

    sas2flsh -o -e -6

  • Got this error: ERROR: Failed to initialize PAL. Exiting program.
Can remember if I've linked this one before or not, nevertheless from this article I saw the writer got the same error.

It worries me a bit as my card didn't got recognized in the UEFI and this article suggests that if you get this error the easy solutions is to find an UEFI alternative.

 

One of my main problems as well is that I can get an image on the screen every time I turn the computer on, this it's because the LSI card isn't flashed yet, at least that was what my research showed. So to figure out whether a small change or not is making the difference or not can take a lot of time, which turns into frustrations.

I'm not absolutely sure if that's the error I got when I tried the DOS route, but

it might well have been. I have indeed read the article you've linked, it was the

source that lead me to the UEFI route actually. And yes, it seems pretty much that

the error you're getting is related to the "limited option ROM" issue, so I'm not

sure how much you can do about it if the EFI thing doesn't work for you unfortunately

(which, I still think is a bit strange). The only thing that comes to mind is trying

to find a motherboard that doesn't have that issue, but that might be tricky and

expensive.

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I'm not absolutely sure if that's the error I got when I tried the DOS route, but

it might well have been. I have indeed read the article you've linked, it was the

source that lead me to the UEFI route actually. And yes, it seems pretty much that

the error you're getting is related to the "limited option ROM" issue, so I'm not

sure how much you can do about it if the EFI thing doesn't work for you unfortunately

(which, I still think is a bit strange). The only thing that comes to mind is trying

to find a motherboard that doesn't have that issue, but that might be tricky and

expensive.

I might as well link to this as well: http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/ibm-m1015-boot-problem.17686/

From the guy I'm writing with his solution seems to be a combination of MS DOS and UEFI. As far as I can see I'll have to reset the LSI's BIOS in MS DOS and then flash it within the UEFI. Not sure though and as you can see I'm still waiting for a reply.

 

Panz seems to have done similar thing with flashing the M1015 from an old motherboard. The only and oldest motherboard I'll be able to find is this from an old Fujitsu Siemens computer, I have no idea of what motherboard is in there but if the other possible solutions don't work out this will be worth a try.

Here is a picture of the internals, not sure how much anybody will be able to tell from it though.

H5KKdxq.jpg

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Interesting. I must say, as happy as I've been with the controllers from

LSI I have, this process really shouldn't be so difficult, that's just utterly

ridiculous and a humongous fail IMO. Bad LSI, bad bad bad LSI. :angry:

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I'm starting to get more and more worried that I wont get this card flashed.

 

Could it be a bad card? I just don't think it is as it is recognized during boot as you can see from on of the previous pictures.

 

I just tried your guide again, formatted a new USB stick to FAT instead of FAT32 as I did by an accident last time. Didn't changed a thing, it still says there's no adapter connected to the system. I tried panz's DOS+UEFI guide but without initial luck, will have to try that again tomorrow. If that doesn't work out my next option will be that old computer, hopefully that'll work, otherwise I'm starting to run out of ideas.

 

Suggestion of what I can do or try?

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- despair -

Well the only thing you haven't tried yet is doing it from a Linux USB stick, however

as far as I've been informed the sas2flash binary for Linux does not support flashing

the IT firmware for some reason, so I'm very doubtful that it'll work. Other than that

I don't really know any other tricks either. But I don't think you got a bad card, I

agree that it's a software issue. Sorry I can't be of more help. :(

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I think I might have got a breakthrough. At the moment it's displaying "Erasing flash chip (16 mb)". How long does this step take, it's been running for 5min or so now.

Great to hear. On my machine it took about 30 sec, but it might depend on your

card and/or PC, hard to say. How did you get it to recognize the card?

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I tried to put the card in the old computer but nothing. Threw it in my main rig and I got this far. Unfortunately it were stuck on that Erasing Flash Chip for over an hour! No reaction to keyboard commands so I took bold move and restarted the computer. I had no idea what else to do, keep waiting seemed meaningless as nothing happened for over an hour.

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I tried to put the card in the old computer but nothing. Threw it in my main rig and I got this far. Unfortunately it were stuck on that Erasing Flash Chip for over an hour! No reaction to keyboard commands so I took bold move and restarted the computer. I had no idea what else to do, keep waiting seemed meaningless as nothing happened for over an hour.

Damn, that sucks. :(

But yeah, after an hour of nothing happening I would have done the same.

Is the card still recognized or is it bricked now?

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I think the card is still recognizable, luckily for me.

 

I just gave it another attempt with a MS DOS bootable USB stick and got through the commands:

megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.binmegarec -cleanflash 0
I rebooted the system and got back into the USB stick as this guide said and typed in following command.

sas2flsh -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom
I'm writing from a laptop which apparently can't access my iPhone, so I can't show you the picture of the text it showed.

LSI Corporation SAS2 Flash UtilityVersion 12.00.00.00 (2011.11.00)Copyright (c) 2000-2011 LSI Corporation. All rights reservedAdvanced Mode SetAdapter Selected is a LSI SAS: SAS2008(B2)Executing Operation: Flash Firmware ImageFirmware Image has a Valid Checksum.Firmaware Image compatiable with Controller.Valid NVDATA Image found.NVDATA Device ID and Chip Revision match verified.Valid Initialization Image verified.Valid BootLoader Image verified.Chip is in RESER state. Attempting Host Boot...ERROR: Firmware Host Boot Failed!Due to error remaining commands will not be executed.Unable to Process Commands.Exiting SAS2Flash.
Any suggestions were I should go on from here?

 

Since the first two megarec commands went through with success I guess the card has been reset, so I'm thinking to try and flash the card with a newer firmware like P16, P17 or P18.

 

Edit: Do you have any ideas of how I can access the EFI shell on my main rig with a Gigabyte Z68 motherboard and a i5 2500K? I've tried with the X64 shell named shell.efi and shellx64.efi, both without any luck.

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I think the card is still recognizable, luckily for me.

I just gave it another attempt with a MS DOS bootable USB stick and got through the commands:

megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.binmegarec -cleanflash 0
I rebooted the system and got back into the USB stick as this guide said and typed in following command.

sas2flsh -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom
I'm writing from a laptop which apparently can't access my iPhone, so I can't show you the picture of the text it showed.

LSI Corporation SAS2 Flash UtilityVersion 12.00.00.00 (2011.11.00)Copyright (c) 2000-2011 LSI Corporation. All rights reservedAdvanced Mode SetAdapter Selected is a LSI SAS: SAS2008(B2)Executing Operation: Flash Firmware ImageFirmware Image has a Valid Checksum.Firmaware Image compatiable with Controller.Valid NVDATA Image found.NVDATA Device ID and Chip Revision match verified.Valid Initialization Image verified.Valid BootLoader Image verified.Chip is in RESER state. Attempting Host Boot...ERROR: Firmware Host Boot Failed!Due to error remaining commands will not be executed.Unable to Process Commands.Exiting SAS2Flash.
Any suggestions were I should go on from here?

Since the first two megarec commands went through with success I guess the card has been reset, so I'm thinking to try and flash the card with a newer firmware like P16, P17 or P18.

 

Hm, googling for that error has lead me to this thread on H , which has a

few interesting tidbits that intrigue me. It's about a Dell controller but

it might still be valid in your case.

Among other things, this popped out to me:

Don't forget if you are moving from dell IR firmware to LSI IT firmware...

You have to do it in a 3 step dance ( doesn't mater which versions)

Dell IR

Then Dell IT

Then LSI IT

Not direct from Dell IR to LSI IT....

I don't know if there's an IT firmware from IBM themselves though, if not this

is a moot point anyway.

Also, it seems that it can depend on the specific sas2flash version you're running,

it seems that some work and some don't, possibly because LSI added some checks in

newer versions to prevent it running on certain non-LSI branded controllers (just

speculation though).

So I'd say it might be worth a shot to try an older version of sas2flash?

 

Edit: Do you have any ideas of how I can access the EFI shell on my main rig with a Gigabyte Z68 motherboard and a i5 2500K? I've tried with the X64 shell named shell.efi and shellx64.efi, both without any luck.

The EFI shells I'm aware of all are listed in the original post, you could try

it different ones work for you, or name it 'Shell.efi' (capital 'S'), but other

than that I'm not sure how to solve that. The board I'm using to flash my controllers

is a P67 board, so I'm kinda stumped why a Z68 wouldn't work.

EDIT:

Have you tried flashing the firmware for the LSI 9210-8i? According to this thread,

that is actually the corresponding LSI model for the M1015, so it might be that newer

versions of the 9211-8i firmware no longer work on the 9210-8i, but older versions

did. If it was me in your shoes, that would probably be my next step.

LSI 9210-8i product page

Edited by alpenwasser
9210-8i info

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Hm, googling for that error has lead me to this thread on H , which has a

few interesting tidbits that intrigue me. It's about a Dell controller but

it might still be valid in your case.

OP from that thread has the exact same controller as I do, SAS2008(B2). Unfortunately, as you can see from page #2, he gave up for now, which is rather demotivating to be honest. I will carry on though.

 

Among other things, this popped out to me:

 

 

Don't forget if you are moving from dell IR firmware to LSI IT firmware...

You have to do it in a 3 step dance ( doesn't mater which versions)

Dell IR

Then Dell IT

Then LSI IT

Not direct from Dell IR to LSI IT....

I don't know if there's an IT firmware from IBM themselves though, if not this

is a moot point anyway.

It seems a bit weird that you should flash it to Dell IT before LSI IT as I thought it would depend on the controller.

 

I did a quick search on IBM for "M1015 utility" and found these three pages.

Whether they contains something useful I'm not so sure of. The second link do contain MegaCLI and BIOS & Firmware updates for M1015.

 

Also, it seems that it can depend on the specific sas2flash version you're running,

it seems that some work and some don't, possibly because LSI added some checks in

newer versions to prevent it running on certain non-LSI branded controllers (just

speculation though).

So I'd say it might be worth a shot to try an older version of sas2flash?

From the thread on H, it seems like it's the general suggestion as well.

 

Here's what I've obtained from my trial and error.

  • A HDD should be attached to the M1015.
  • MS DOS P18 with no HDD's attahced to the M1015. I'm stuck at the MegaRec commands. Picture.
  • MS DOS P18 with 1 HDD attached to the M1015. Stuck at "Erasing Flash Chip (16MB)". Picture.
  • MS DOS P11 with 1 HDD attached to the M1015. "Error: Firmware Host Boot Failed!". Picture.

All of this is from my main rig. I tried to boot from the MS DOS bootable USB stick on the old computer as link in an earlier post but it wouldn't no matter what USB port the stick what inserted to.

I think it looks like I definitely need to flash the M1015 from my main rig as I've had most success on it and it looks like I'm getting more progress with an older firmware.

 

The EFI shells I'm aware of all are listed in the original post, you could try

it different ones work for you, or name it 'Shell.efi' (capital 'S'), but other

than that I'm not sure how to solve that. The board I'm using to flash my controllers

is a P67 board, so I'm kinda stumped why a Z68 wouldn't work.

I'll have to do some more trial and error on this one but as I've made more progress on a MS DOS USB stick, I think it's more sensible to try with some earlier firmware first, before I move on to EFI.

 

EDIT:

Have you tried flashing the firmware for the LSI 9210-8i? According to this thread,

that is actually the corresponding LSI model for the M1015, so it might be that newer

versions of the 9211-8i firmware no longer work on the 9210-8i, but older versions

did. If it was me in your shoes, that would probably be my next step.

LSI 9210-8i product page

So what you suggest is that I should try and flash the card with the 9210-8i firmware instead, from this page?

NAS build log: Gimli, a NAS build by Shaqalac.

Mechanical keyboards: Ducky Mini YotH - Ducky Mini

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So what you suggest is that I should try and flash the card with the 9210-8i firmware instead, from this page?

Yeah, if it was my controller that's probably what I'd try since it seems

like the most logical step as far as I can tell and the approach so far

has been rather troublesome.

BUILD LOGS: HELIOS - Latest Update: 2015-SEP-06 ::: ZEUS - BOTW 2013-JUN-28 ::: APOLLO - Complete: 2014-MAY-10
OTHER STUFF: Cable Lacing Tutorial ::: What Is ZFS? ::: mincss Primer ::: LSI RAID Card Flashing Tutorial
FORUM INFO: Community Standards ::: The Moderating Team ::: 10TB+ Storage Showoff Topic

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I... I think I finally did it...

Yay!!! :D

You sound exhausted. Details when you have the time and energy. ;)

BUILD LOGS: HELIOS - Latest Update: 2015-SEP-06 ::: ZEUS - BOTW 2013-JUN-28 ::: APOLLO - Complete: 2014-MAY-10
OTHER STUFF: Cable Lacing Tutorial ::: What Is ZFS? ::: mincss Primer ::: LSI RAID Card Flashing Tutorial
FORUM INFO: Community Standards ::: The Moderating Team ::: 10TB+ Storage Showoff Topic

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I had good success flashing my 9211-8i with a DOS boot thumb drive after about 10 minutes of Googling for the speed bumps. But now with CentOS 6 my 24 drive Supermicro backplane reports 48 drives in dmesg. I built the LSI drivers from source but I think they are the same version mpt_sas drivers shipped with CentOS 6.5 so nothing changed.

 

--ideas?

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I had good success flashing my 9211-8i with a DOS boot thumb drive after about 10 minutes of Googling for the speed bumps. But now with CentOS 6 my 24 drive Supermicro backplane reports 48 drives in dmesg. I built the LSI drivers from source but I think they are the same version mpt_sas drivers shipped with CentOS 6.5 so nothing changed.

 

--ideas?

Hm, just to make sure I understand your problem: You switched from

the default drivers which came with CentOS 6.5 to the ones you

built yourselves, and stuff broke, correct? And how specifically

is your setup built, one controller going to a SAS expander backplane,

or multiple controllers going to the 24 port backplane?

I can't really say I've ever had any issues with the drivers (I'm

running Arch Linux). I plugged them in and so far no manual intervention

has been necessary, all drives have been reported correctly.

What do you get when you run

lsblk
and

ls -lah /dev/disk/by-id/
?

BUILD LOGS: HELIOS - Latest Update: 2015-SEP-06 ::: ZEUS - BOTW 2013-JUN-28 ::: APOLLO - Complete: 2014-MAY-10
OTHER STUFF: Cable Lacing Tutorial ::: What Is ZFS? ::: mincss Primer ::: LSI RAID Card Flashing Tutorial
FORUM INFO: Community Standards ::: The Moderating Team ::: 10TB+ Storage Showoff Topic

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