[SOLVED] New HBA (LSI 9201-16e) drives not being detected

[Proteus07]

Hi all,

I've just installed a LSI 9201-16e into my UnRAID system. I already have a 9300-8i that works great, so figured it'd just be plug and play. When the system boots however none of the drives (4 HDD's) connected to the new HBA show up in UnRAID.

I've confirmed that both HBA's shows up when running lspci:

   

2b:00.0 Serial Attached SCSI controller: Broadcom / LSI SAS3008 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-3 (rev 02)
    2c:00.0 Serial Attached SCSI controller: Broadcom / LSI SAS2116 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2 [Meteor] (rev 02)

My first thought was to try updating, or at least checking the version of, the firmware on the new HBA. So I rebooted the system only to find that the new card doesn't show up when I open the Ctrl+C LSI config utility in BIOS, only the 9300-8i shows up. I figure that this is because the card doesn't have BIOS installed so it's not the end of the world.

So I try following this guide: [https://forums.unraid.net/topic/97870-how-to-upgrade-an-lsi-hba-firmware-using-unraid/](https://forums.unraid.net/topic/97870-how-to-upgrade-an-lsi-hba-firmware-using-unraid/)

However when I get to the step of running sas2flash -listall, I get the following message:

   

LSI Corporation SAS2 Flash Utility
    Version 20.00.00.00 (2014.09.18)
    Copyright (c) 2008-2014 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved
    
            No LSI SAS adapters found! Limited Command Set Available!
            ERROR: Command Not allowed without an adapter!
            ERROR: Couldn't Create Command -listall
            Exiting Program.

I'm not really sure where to go from here, any help would be appreciated.

Edited August 22, 2021 by Proteus07

[JorgeB]

Please post the diagnostics: Tools -> Diagnostics

[Proteus07]

Diagnostics .zip attached. Sorry for not including this in OP.

perplex-diagnostics-20210821-1823.zip

[itimpi]

Looking at the diagnostics it does not appear that any driver is loaded for the 16e card, not sure why.  Is as if Unraid is not seeing it even though it shows up at the PCI level.

 

[JorgeB]

Aug 21 22:46:50 Perplex kernel: mpt2sas_cm0: failure at drivers/scsi/mpt3sas/mpt3sas_scsih.c:11045/_scsih_probe()!

LSI driver is crashing, 9300-8i is using a very old firmware, it should be updated, note that it will require doing a new config after since the disks will be detected with different names, one of the problems of that firmware, then test again, or test with just the 9201-16e to see if it works by itself.

[Proteus07]

2 hours ago, JorgeB said:

Aug 21 22:46:50 Perplex kernel: mpt2sas_cm0: failure at drivers/scsi/mpt3sas/mpt3sas_scsih.c:11045/_scsih_probe()!

LSI driver is crashing, 9300-8i is using a very old firmware, it should be updated, note that it will require doing a new config after since the disks will be detected with different names, one of the problems of that firmware, then test again, or test with just the 9201-16e to see if it works by itself.

Just wanted to check before I go ahead and break things, if I update the firmware on the 9300-8i, will I be able to then just create a new config, assign my disks to exactly the assignments they had before based on serial numbers, and it should all be good?

Before I do that I will test the card on it's own however, and see whether I'm still getting that driver crash. Thanks for the assistance.

[JorgeB]

19 hours ago, Proteus07 said:

if I update the firmware on the 9300-8i, will I be able to then just create a new config, assign my disks to exactly the assignments they had before based on serial numbers, and it should all be good?

Yes, check "parity is already valid" before array start.

[Proteus07]

Okay so just an update for anyone curious, I was able to follow these instructions which allowed me to update the firmware on the 9201-16e, and then repeated the process for the 9300-8i so they are both up to date. But then for some reason I wasn't able to boot and get a GUI. Couldn't spot any errors in the log, so I tried booting Unraid in safe mode and hurrah. Was able to assign my disks back to their original assignments using a new config, and tested that it was all working. Seemed fine so far. So I booted back into non-safe mode and it ended up booting fine, no problems. Now have been able to assign the four new drives to the array and all seems to be working well.

 

Something strange though - when the system boots, and I get the BIOS screens for the HBA's, it says to press Ctrl+C to enter the config utility, which I wanted to do so I could disable the HBA's as boot devices. However the system just doesn't seem to respond to the Ctrl+C keypress and I can't for the life of me get into the configuration. Not the end of the world, but a bit frustrating. The main thing is that the system is now booting and recognizing all drives in both HBA's. Thanks very much for your help @JorgeB.

[JorgeB]

9 minutes ago, Proteus07 said:

However the system just doesn't seem to respond to the Ctrl+C keypress and I can't for the life of me get into the configuration.

This is usually a board issue, you can just delete the BIOS since they are not needed for Unraid, it will boot faster.