6 hours ago, SSD said:

 

I deactivated the BIOS. It still sits there forever on boot.

You need to erase the bios from flash.

I'm not sure if "5" is the right option.

Prepare yourself for a full re-flash in case it does not work.

 

13 minutes ago, Fireball3 said:

I'm not sure if "5" is the right option.

It is.

 

sas2flash -o -e 5

then confirm it was removed with

 

sas2flash -list 

Bios Version should now read N/A

 

 

Edited February 9, 20188 yr by johnnie.black

2 hours ago, johnnie.black said:

then confirm it was removed with

 

sas2flash -list 

Bios Version should now read N/A

If you have more than one controller you have to specify the desired one - same for the erase operation!

Better make sure you have only the desired controller plugged.

 

Also, the -list is usually somewhat lengthy so it won't fit into your screen buffer.

The line with the BIOS info is at the beginning of the dump.

You may have to pipe the output into a file.

There is a log option "-l settings.log" also, but I found it doesn't always work for some reason.

 

But you can also simply reboot and see that there is no BIOS anymore.

Edited February 9, 20188 yr by Fireball3

6 hours ago, Fireball3 said:

If you have more than one controller you have to specify the desired one - same for the erase operation!

Better make sure you have only the desired controller plugged.

 

Also, the -list is usually somewhat lengthy so it won't fit into your screen buffer.

The line with the BIOS info is at the beginning of the dump.

You may have to pipe the output into a file.

There is a log option "-l settings.log" also, but I found it doesn't always work for some reason.

 

But you can also simply reboot and see that there is no BIOS anymore.

 Thanks Fireball3 and @johnnie.black,

 

So help me with what I need to do to be able to run the sas2flash program.

 

Do I need to boot into DOS? Where would I find the current version of sas2flash?

 

Is there a thread that I could follow? I am seeing flashing instructions but nothing for the 9201 specifically.

 

Thanks!

51 minutes ago, SSD said:

Do I need to boot into DOS?

Either boot DOS and use sas2flsh.exe or UEFI and use sas2flash.efi, both are on the wiki toolset:

 

https://lime-technology.com/wiki/Crossflashing_Controllers#LSI_MegaRAID_with_SAS2008_chipsets

 

Scroll down to the Notes and download LSI MegaRAID to SAS2008(P20).zip - 4.1 MB (FREEDOS, via bootable usb key), it contains both

 

34 minutes ago, johnnie.black said:

Either boot DOS and use sas2flsh.exe or UEFI and use sas2flash.efi, both are on the wiki toolset:

 

https://lime-technology.com/wiki/Crossflashing_Controllers#LSI_MegaRAID_with_SAS2008_chipsets

 

Scroll down to the Notes and download LSI MegaRAID to SAS2008(P20).zip - 4.1 MB (FREEDOS, via bootable usb key), it contains both

 

 

I am on MPT2BIOS-7.19.00.00 (2011.05.16). Is this a newer BIOS? Should I upgrade?

13 minutes ago, SSD said:

I am on MPT2BIOS-7.19.00.00 (2011.05.16). Is this a newer BIOS? Should I upgrade?

I don't remember what's the latest bios version, latest firmware is 20.00.07, the bios included with that will be the latest, and if you're running an older firmware it will likely also have an older bios.

@SSD
Firmware & BIOS are two different things. IIRC, you are trying to speed up the boot process. So you would be clearing both and flashing the the controller to the latest FW and skipping the BIOS.



Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

@nthu9280, @johnnie.black, 

 

I have been having other boot issues - seems that if an HBA has too many hard disks, that the BIOS overflowed or something and the boot would hang (keyboard lights stopped working), always a bad sign. Only if i hit the button to manually pick the boot device could I get unRAID to boot. So went searching BIOS for options.

 

I found this setting called "CSM (Compatibility Support Module)" with choices of Enabled or Disabled.

 

When enabled it initializes each disk controller and recognizes the drives like normal, but when disabled, it skips all that completely. The USB boot just happens right away. When unRAID boots, it recognizes the controllers and disks just fine.

 

I think that is all I need! Nice BIOS feature, that didn't exactly jump off the screen as something useful at first glance.

 

Maybe this info will help someone else in the future.

 

But when I move this card into the backup server, I will want to flash it if it is generating long boot delays as that is an older MB and I'm pretty sure does not have this feature.

 

Thanks again!

1 hour ago, SSD said:

When enabled it initializes each disk controller and recognizes the drives like normal, but when disabled, it skips all that completely. The USB boot just happens right away. When unRAID boots, it recognizes the controllers and disks just fine.

When CSM is disable only UEFI boot is available, so all HBA BIOS, NIC Boot ROMS, etc are skipped.

1 minute ago, johnnie.black said:

When CSM is disable only UEFI boot is available, so all HBA BIOS, NIC Boot ROMS, etc are skipped.

 

Strangely - when it boots with this option, the syslinux menu does not count down. It just sits there saying it is going to count down but it is stuck at 5 seconds. After a while the machine reboots. If I hit enter to select one of the syslinux options, it boots fine.

1 minute ago, SSD said:

 

Strangely - when it boots with this option, the syslinux menu does not count down. It just sits there saying it is going to count down but it is stuck at 5 seconds. After a while the machine reboots. If I hit enter to select one of the syslinux options, it boots fine.

That's likely a UEFI bug on the board you're using, bios update might help.

26 minutes ago, johnnie.black said:

That's likely a UEFI bug on the board you're using, bios update might help.

 

I'll check. Updated it pretty recently but its a new board and there might be another.

Hello guys new to the forum and Unraid! just go my hand on a 9211-8i from ebay. and I've read online that you need to flash the firmware to a newer ideration and IT mode to use it as a normal sata controller. But when I installed mine i'ts saying FW 20 and -IT mode. Does that mean I dont have to do anything? 

27 minutes ago, Watterud said:

Hello guys new to the forum and Unraid! just go my hand on a 9211-8i from ebay. and I've read online that you need to flash the firmware to a newer ideration and IT mode to use it as a normal sata controller. But when I installed mine i'ts saying FW 20 and -IT mode. Does that mean I dont have to do anything? 

Should just work then.

Plug a HDD in and then, see if appears unraid. If it does boom working.

49 minutes ago, Watterud said:

i'ts saying FW 20 and -IT mode

Check it's using the latest firmware P20.00.07, there were two previous releases and the 1st one especially (p20.00.00) had issues.

Hey guys

just got a LSI 9211-8i HBA card and wanted to flash it to IT Mode. But my stupid Gigabyte motherboard has BIOs limitations and comes with the infamous failure “"Failed to initialize PAL". 

 

I have tried with many different EFI shell, but nothing work. So it looks like i have to invest in a motherboard, where i am able to flash the HBA card to IT-mode

 

The motherboard need to support LGA1150, and been looking at Supermicro motherboards, but i like to know if you have other good suggestion. 

 

The main use has been as a NAS/plex server and download/backup station. But i like to be able to fiddle with VMs in the future. Nothing heavy though.

 

I hope some of you can pinpoint me in the right direction

21 hours ago, kasper1705 said:

just got a LSI 9211-8i HBA

If you have this card, it should already be in IT mode!

That's what HBA refers to!

Hi,

 

The other day I got a Dell H310 from ebay. I downloaded the latest toolkit from here, and booted into FreeDOS. 1.bat failed saying that megacli didn't work, and sas2flash.exe had the PAL error. So I booted into the EFI terminal, but wasn't sure what to do next. I had another look at the EFI step-by-step, and I see that 1.bat should have worked in FreeDOS.

 

In DOS I tried, megarec.exe -adpList, which returned saying that there was no SAS card. I also tried P7_sas2flash.efi -listall in EFI which also said that there was no card.

 

I then tried everything again with the card in a different PCIe slot, but had the same results. Also tried the tape on those two pins, but that didn't seem to make any difference.

 

I haven't got another mainboard to try it on.

 

Is the card dead?

Hi, welcome to the unRAID forums.

When booting into efi shell you have can use the .nsh files, but sas2flash.efi -listall should work.

 

Is your card detected at boot?

If the card is in RAID mode you should notice it checking for drives at start-up.

17 hours ago, Fireball3 said:

Hi, welcome to the unRAID forums.

When booting into efi shell you have can use the .nsh files, but sas2flash.efi -listall should work.

 

Is your card detected at boot?

If the card is in RAID mode you should notice it checking for drives at start-up.

Thank you for the welcome! And thanks for the tip about the .nsh files.

 

I didn't see any sign from it during boot. Would it do that even without any drives plugged into it?

6 hours ago, Josey said:

I didn't see any sign from it during boot. Would it do that even without any drives plugged into it?

Yes, the card will show up during boot, checking for drives etc.

But only if the card is in RAID mode with a BIOS installed, which is usually the case, as those are designated for

use in RAID mode.

There is a LED on the card that is usually flashing (lifesign), does it work on your card?

Maybe you can try the card somewhere on another board?

Does the LSI SAS9201-16i support 8, 10 and 12 Tb drives?

Yes, it does.