LSI Controller FW updates IR/IT modes


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Yipes!  Cross flashed my M1015 this morning with downloaded files from first post on this forum using USB DOS. Bats 1-6  Now the card shows up in MB post (As LSI 9211-8i), can get into lsi config util using ctrl + c, util is usable, exit then,  post may or may not move onto an on board (nVidia) raid controller that then attempts to "detect array"  which does not exist and of course never configured in that way.  System will not progress past any of this unless I remove M1015

 

MB= DFI-nF4-Landparty SLI-DR  onboard nVida ans Sil image Raid controllers not configured for raid,  PCI Zotac vid card,  Athlon dual core CPU,  8 Gb OCZ memory (4 dims), Sil Image 2114 and 2112 PCI raid cards, Vertex4 SSD onboard nics etc  it all works without the crossflashed M1015

This board also has had another cross flashed M1015 which worked flawlessly for years. I pulled this one  prior to cross flashing new card

 

Prior to cross flashing this new card I had it installed in a brand new Asrock Z97 Extreme9 board,  not sure don't remember but don't think it would allow boot to progress past M1015 Bios then either but had a 10gb nic installed with its own bios and it wanted to PXE boot so don't know which card was hosing boot order.  Took them both out and boot city!

So perhaps card hosed prior to flash don't know however I had to get past this card to boot into USB DOS and run SAS2FLSH

 

I get the following from the config util.

Boot disabled (boot order 0)

MPT Firmware revision 11.00.00.00-it

NVDAT Version 0a.03.00.04

Chip Revision ID V7.21.00.06 (2011.08.11)

 

What next any pointers on how to get past 9211 post? Perhaps try a reflash or do I have a brick on my hands?

 

 

 

 

 

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I have solved my cross flashing issue. But not after my favorite mainboard brand Gigabyte disappointed me.

 

I learned how easy it is to make a USB pendrive EFI bootable. Just drop this binary into that flash drive FAT's root directory and rename it to <shellx64.efi>.

Also, from Roderick W. Smith's site rodsbook.com I learned that Gigabyte's Hybrid EFI implementation is one of the worst that Mr Smith has encountered. So, if you have a Gigabyte mainboard forget EFI Shell, it probably won't work. It has cost me several hours today.

 

I eventually solved it by inserting the LSI 9240-8i into the PCI Express x16 slot of an Asrock H81 Pro BTC mainboard. (A mainboard I almost forgot I still own. A relic from my scrypt mining days.) After entering the BIOS and going to the last menu "Exit", I selected the bottom option "Launch EFI Shell from filesystem device". It gave me a <SHELL> prompt. I selected my USB pendrive by typing "FS0:". I browsed to the location of my sas2flash.efi, 2118it.bin and mptsas2.rom files and executed the following two commands;

sas2flash -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom
sas2flash -o -sasadd 500605b0xxxxxxxx (replace the xx's with the SAS address from your card)

 

Identical to BetaQuasi's M1015 Cross flashing instructions except that I used <sas2flash.efi> instead of <sas2flsh.exe>.

Unraid 5.0.5 has identified the card and the attached drives. I'm a happy camper ! ;-)

 

I stopped using Gigabyte after my first flash ;) Asrock or MSI and nothing else...

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Hi All,

 

I am hoping for some good piece of advice as I am really going crazy with trying to flash my LSI 9211-8i. When it shipped from Hong-Kong it worked perfectly until it stopped recognizing drives connected to PORT-A. I thought (stupid me) that a firmware upgrade will help. It shipped with P11 IR software onboard. I booted to USB DOS and tried to upgrade it to P19 IT from LSI page.

 

After:

sas2flsh -o -e 6

I tried

sas2flsh -o -f 2118IT.bin -b mptsas2.rom

it throwed an error (did not take notice what exacly) and I had to reboot.

 

Since then I tried literaly all methods found on foras on how to flash/crossflash LSI-9211i firmware. MegaRec, MegaOEM, sas2flsh -dos, sas2flash - uefi - nothig works for me. MegaRec can see the card I can -writesbr / -cleanflash but later when I reboot and try to download firmware to the chip (bios, nobios, with -o, w/o -o - you name it) - it displays "Failed to validate Mfg 2 page". I tried almost all P-firmware versions in IT and IR using different sas2flsh versions.

 

Did anybody manage to overcome this issue. I tried in ASUS P5K WS and ASUS P5W DH Delux PCIe-x16 port and in one of the SuperMicro Z77 UEFI. Tried in some HP and Fujitsu-Siemens Workstation at work but there it gave me the infamous PAL error.

 

I would appreciate a piece of advice. Could one of You LSI-9211-8i owners upload its SBR and full flash .ROM file to the forum. I was thinking about fulflashing it with MegaRec instead of trying firmware upgrade with SAS2FLSH.

 

Thanks thanks thanks

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When it shipped from Hong-Kong it worked perfectly until it stopped recognizing drives connected to PORT-A. I thought (stupid me) that a firmware upgrade will help. It shipped with P11 IR software onboard. I booted to USB DOS and tried to upgrade it to P19 IT from LSI page.

If it is genuine LSI and is obviously defective (port A not working) why not RMA?

You did nothing illegal when trying to flash LSI supported firmware.

At least they (LSI) should be able to send you a stock rom to solve your problem - although I doubt you will be

able to solve potential hardware issues like that.

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  • 4 weeks later...

RMA seems lika a last resort to me (will take 3-4 weeks give or take). So I want to give it a last try with original flash and sbr. Hope that somebody can extract it from his 9211-8i and post it here.

 

Did you get any luck with this? I too have a 9211-8i with a bad flash and need the full rom so I can try a different flash method to bypass the Mfg Page 2 error...

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  • 4 weeks later...

I have solved my cross flashing issue. But not after my favorite mainboard brand Gigabyte disappointed me.

 

I learned how easy it is to make a USB pendrive EFI bootable. Just drop this binary into that flash drive FAT's root directory and rename it to <shellx64.efi>.

Also, from Roderick W. Smith's site rodsbook.com I learned that Gigabyte's Hybrid EFI implementation is one of the worst that Mr Smith has encountered. So, if you have a Gigabyte mainboard forget EFI Shell, it probably won't work. It has cost me several hours today.

 

I eventually solved it by inserting the LSI 9240-8i into the PCI Express x16 slot of an Asrock H81 Pro BTC mainboard. (A mainboard I almost forgot I still own. A relic from my scrypt mining days.) After entering the BIOS and going to the last menu "Exit", I selected the bottom option "Launch EFI Shell from filesystem device". It gave me a <SHELL> prompt. I selected my USB pendrive by typing "FS0:". I browsed to the location of my sas2flash.efi, 2118it.bin and mptsas2.rom files and executed the following two commands;

sas2flash -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom
sas2flash -o -sasadd 500605b0xxxxxxxx (replace the xx's with the SAS address from your card)

 

Identical to BetaQuasi's M1015 Cross flashing instructions except that I used <sas2flash.efi> instead of <sas2flsh.exe>.

Unraid 5.0.5 has identified the card and the attached drives. I'm a happy camper ! ;-)

 

Thanks for this post, it got me pointed in the right direction. I just want to add what I did to get my 9240-8i flashed on a Lenovo TS140. This will probably work on other systems that don't have a boot to efi shell boot option:

  • use the first page of BetaQuasi's M1015 Cross flashing instructions as a guide
  • create the bootable USB key as described
  • grab the latest 9211-8i package from LSI's web site (as of this writing P19)
  • replace the 2118it.bin and mptsas2.rom files on the USB key with the ones in the package you just downloaded
  • create a directory structure \efi\boot\ on the USB key
  • copy <usb>:\Shell_Full.efi to <usb>:\efi\boot\bootx64.efi
  • set bios on system to uefi only
  • boot from USB key
  • the system should boot to the efi shell
  • from the shell type fs0: to get to the root of the USB key were all the files are
  • continue following the M1015 Cross flashing instructions

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi

 

I have asus sabertooth 990fx r2.0 mobo and two lsi megaraid sas 9240 8i.

I have 12 3TB HDD and 4 2TB HDD

I bought these cards from ebay. Lsi support says these are not original cards they are cheap copys. (Yes I they are cheap, I bought two for 200$)

 

Fist I try lastest fw from lsi but can not get boot to windows.

 

Second I tryed - http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/topic/29059-sas2008-lsi92409211-firmware-files/ - topic method.

At this time seems work fine but reset them randomly. Megaraid software error " sistem failure, card reset ..." (something like that.)

 

I have two questions. Fist wich fw (and bios) do you recommend.

 

Second one is I get "failed to initialize pal exiting program" error when ? tryed to use " sas2flsh". I changed bios settings at mobo to uefi.   

 

Sorry for bad english

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  • 3 weeks later...

First of all, thank you to the OP and other posters for the hard work on this thread. 

 

I need to setup a Lenovo ThinkServer TS440 for unRAID.  It has a Raid 500 card which is a rebranded LSI 9240-8i using the LSI SAS2008 chipset.  I need to flash it to IT mode.  A few questions:

 

1. Is the zip file  for SAS2008 on the first page still current? 

 

2.  Do I use the P7 version of the firmware from the zip file (because the card is re-branded) or the latest 9211 firmware from LSI?  P19 seems to be the latest.

 

3.  I am concerned about getting the PAL error because I don't think the TS440 has a boot to EFI shell option.  What is the easiest solution?  Put the card into another motherboard to do the flash?

 

Any other advice would be appreciated.  It is my first time doing this.

 

 

 

 

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Hi,

interesting find with that Raid500! That card seems completely new in the unRAID business.

 

You should know, that frome here, it is all experimental and there is a chance to brick the controller!

I did it with an FSC D2607 that also has the SAS2008 chip but won't flash correctly to LSI9211i firmware.

This could also happen to the Lenovo build - but no one can tell you that (from what i found on the net).

Bricking is really the worst case scenario since most tools simply won't flash and stop with an error.

In my case FSC delivered a really nasty tool but that's another story...

Far more probable is that you end up with an erased ROM and can't manage to flash the LSI firmware. Then you have to revert to the Lenovo firmware. This should ideally work at any time but you know this guy, Murphy?

 

1. As a first step, I would go straight to the latest LSI firmware (P19)

Use the tools and instructions from LSI. Make sure you capture the logs when flashing.

Use the logging options!

Here is how Lenovo does the flashing - they use megacli (I never used it)

 

2. If P19 toolset won't work, you can try the P7 (use the whole toolset, not only the firmware file!).

P7 is giving you the option to override the vendor mismatch - if that's a problem with P19.

Having P7 flashed you can always go to P19 since P7 will set the same vendor-ID as P19 is expecting.

 

3. You don't need the EFI shell. You can work with DOS bootdisk/usb drive as well.

Let's deal with the PAL error if it is the case.

 

This is you first time...well, shouldn't be a problem if you understand what you're doing.

First, you should read the instructions out of this package.

Just to get the idea what is happening in the whole process.

Then you should be able to tailor your own toolset (if necessary).

Ask you questions before doing something!

 

I suggest you should split this topic into a new thread and come back here later with the result.

 

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  • 1 month later...

Hi guys

 

I have an LSI MegaRAID card: LSI00137, I think it's a  MegaRAID SAS 84016E. I tried to follow "LSI MegaRAID to SAS2008(P11)", it dumps the card info just fine but when doing the next step it says it can't find any controllers.

 

Any ideas?

 

Or, if you know of a way to use disks with this controller without having the controller write anything on the HDD (passthrough like HBA)?

 

edit:

 

Adapter #0

==============================================================================
                    Versions
                ================
Product Name    : MegaRAID SAS 84016E
Serial No       : SP03017445
FW Package Build: 7.0.1-0083

                    Mfg. Data
                ================
Mfg. Date       : 08/02/10
Rework Date     : 00/00/00
Revision No     : (
Battery FRU     : N/A

                Image Versions in Flash:
                ================
Boot Block Version : R.2.3.15
BIOS Version       : MT33
MPT Version        : MPTFW-01.18.172.00-IT
FW Version         : 1.12.330-1300
WebBIOS Version    : 1.1-33j-e_11-Rel
Ctrl-R Version     : 1.04-019A
Preboot CLI Version: 01.00-011:#%00001

                HW Configuration
                ================
SAS Address      : 500605b0025eff50

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Anyone know which firmware i should flash to a SAS 9200-16e?  LSI only has one firmware posted (p5 from 2010), however if you look at the boards, the SAS 9200-16e and SAS 9201-16e are carbon copies of each other, other than the power supply sections.  Both use the LSI SAS2116 chipset.  And the SAS 9201-16e has new rom/firmware update for sep 2014...

 

LSI00189_large.jpg

 

LSI00276_large.jpg

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Be very careful if you use the new P20 firmware. I just upgraded to a H8DGiF MB and 3 H310's. The H310's were flashed to 9211 P20 firmware, wanted to get the upgrades done before switching to 6. 5.0.5 booted just fine and everything seemed ok. The system started running slow and the log showed 1000's of read errors on 2 seagate 2gb drives and a few hundred errors on 2 3gb WD reds, no problems with the other 8 WD red drives. SMART test passed for all 12 drives but UDMA CRC errors were 1000-4000 range. I shutdown server checked all cables and moved cards to different slots. On bootup parity was bad and I tried a noncorrecting scan but it was running at 1MB/s so I cancelled it. Ran diskspeed.sh and drives ranged from 93-131MB/s. While I was wondering what to do next one of the seagate drives red balled. Removed drive, reboot, add it back and start rebuild, this started off at 700k/s. At this point I almost replaced my old Tams MB and controllers, instead I started Googling and found a message on hardforum talking about crazy drive problems with P20.  Reflashed cards back to P19. No more errors and data rebuild is going at 80MB/s.

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Does anybody know if it is possible somehow to flash the LSI MegaRAID 8308ELP into IT mode?

 

I've almost spend the whole day today trying to find out if it is possible, so I would be so happy if somebody could tell me if it's possible, or if I have to buy another card if I want IT mode :)

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