Red Squirrel Posted June 12, 2013 Share Posted June 12, 2013 I think I have a success! Given it did it in another machine, and the fact that it was all 3 cards, I started to have a hunch it had to do with my dos environment. After trying many things, I ended up disabling emm386 for kicks to see what happens.... and it worked! I did not try the bios update as I was only doing that because I thought it would fix the flash issue. When I tried flashing, it worked! I did not test the cards yet, but it looks good so far... I'm doing the 2nd card now. My 3 other cables came in today, so I'm crossing my fingers that everything works when I plug it in and I'll have myself a fully operational server ready to install an OS! As for the matching SAS address, can I just specify another when I flash it? Quote Link to comment
olympia Posted June 13, 2013 Share Posted June 13, 2013 On the page about cross-flashing here: http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-serveraid-m1015-part-4/ He mentions leaving off the -b mptsas2.rom piece in order to get the card to boot faster at start. Seems kind of handy to me. Not that you will start your ESXi server very often, but it might be interesting to some, especially native unRAID installs. Cheers. I tried this and I can confirm flashing the BIOS is not needed (I only checked with barematal unRAID, not in an ESXi environment). Boot is indeed much faster (not that this matter a lot though). Quote Link to comment
brimnac Posted August 10, 2013 Share Posted August 10, 2013 X9SCM BIOS Updating This one is nice and easy! Boot from the USB stick ... After reboot, type "AMI2.BAT" and hit enter. Note the lack of underscore, i.e. do NOT run AMI_2.BAT. AMI_1.BAT tells you this before you reboot in the previous step. Dude - thank you. I had updated to version 2.0b a while back but things just never worked... there were some issues with UNRAID around the same time so I blamed some system errors on that. Finding this post made me realize I had never done the AMI2.bat step, as it isn't mentioned in their instructions. Since I was on 2.0b already I figured I'd just try to update using the second method and see if that let me. No dice. I went through and did the steps as if I was still on 1.x and it worked awesome. I had never noticed my ECC RAM was in Non-ECC mode - that would probably have been enough for most people but... Anyway, thanks a bunch for the instructions - I have all of my RAM for the first time in six or seven months and I'm giddy! Quote Link to comment
BetaQuasi Posted August 11, 2013 Author Share Posted August 11, 2013 Welcome mate, glad to be of help! Sent from my GT-N7105T using Tapatalk 4 Quote Link to comment
StevenD Posted September 1, 2013 Share Posted September 1, 2013 Thanks! This worked perfectly on my two new cards! Quote Link to comment
moose Posted September 2, 2013 Share Posted September 2, 2013 Thank you Beta Quasi! This resource/tools made it really easy to update! FYI the X9SCM-F now has v2.38 IPMI firmware. Quote Link to comment
BetaQuasi Posted September 2, 2013 Author Share Posted September 2, 2013 Thanks Moose, I'll update the fileset on the weekend. Quote Link to comment
noski Posted October 1, 2013 Share Posted October 1, 2013 Hi BetaQuasi, thanks for your info. I have followed your "M1015 -> 9211-IT" instructions and everything appeared to be successful, however on boot it lists my connected hard drives and the following message and then the system hangs: LSI Corporation MPT2 boot ROM successfully installed! I can't even get into the motherboard BIOS anymore (with the card installed). When I try to get into the motherboard bios, I get the same message for a brief second and then the screen goes black. Any ideas? Could it be a motherboard incompatibility? I have an old motherboard - Gigabyte GA-8I915G-MFD. noski. Quote Link to comment
BetaQuasi Posted October 1, 2013 Author Share Posted October 1, 2013 No idea, never seen that. If your card is displaying that above message and showing hard disks, then it seems to be working correctly and I highly doubt there is anything wrong with the card itself. You could try the flash procedure again, this time without the BIOS. I believe you just leave out the "-b mpt2sas.rom" but I'm not 100% sure. Quote Link to comment
noski Posted October 2, 2013 Share Posted October 2, 2013 Well it has taken me all day, 2 different usb drives and 3 different motherboards later, but I finally got there. I couldn't perform the flash procedure on my original motherboard (as previously stated - it would not boot with the card installed) so I had to use a different motherboard. I had 2 others that had pci-e slots. One of my motherboards (much newer than my original motherboard mind you) didn't like my usb drive because it was a "freebie" with a cdfs partition on it and wouldn't boot so I had to dig around for another usb. Once I found another usb that worked, 1 motherboard gave me the "Failed to initialize PAL" error, and the other I needed to use the efi method - which eventually worked. Simply re-running just the flash command without the bios option did not work as I believe this doesn't clear the bios. I needed to run the full procedure (starting with the megarec commands) and then do the flash without the bios. All the frustration finally paid off and it is now working with unraid. Thanks again BetaQuasi for your collection of utilities and documentation. noski. Quote Link to comment
BetaQuasi Posted October 2, 2013 Author Share Posted October 2, 2013 No worries, apologies for not understanding (or reading!) your original issue correctly. Busy times for me at the moment. Quote Link to comment
bmdegraaf Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 I successfully flashed my M1015 to LSI IT version P17 following this thread. However, LSI has a newer software version out. Could someone write up on instruction which files to use from the LSI website? Or better said, how to prepare an usb stick with the latest software? Many thanks. Quote Link to comment
BetaQuasi Posted March 23, 2014 Author Share Posted March 23, 2014 Just grab the download from the LSI site and replace the 2118it.bin file in my archive with the new one. Then follow the steps in 'Upgrading Firmware' in my original posts above. Quote Link to comment
bmdegraaf Posted March 23, 2014 Share Posted March 23, 2014 Many thanks.... that did the trick!! Quote Link to comment
dikkiedirk Posted June 4, 2014 Share Posted June 4, 2014 Many thanks for all this. The EFI shell procedure for flashing the M1015 works also great on an Asrock E3C226D2I. Just flahed one over IPMI. Thanks again! Quote Link to comment
PeterB Posted June 5, 2014 Share Posted June 5, 2014 I don't understand why all this messing around with flash drives, DOS boots etc. I've always flashed my USAS2-L8i under unRAID/slackware, using the LSI Linux flash tool. That has worked on two different mobos. Quote Link to comment
Abula Posted June 9, 2014 Share Posted June 9, 2014 Thanks BetaQuasi, really appreciate the guide, worked like a charm with my X9SCM-F-O, flashed two IBM M1015 in less than 20mins. Quote Link to comment
Abula Posted June 18, 2014 Share Posted June 18, 2014 Anyone know what would be the procedure to flash an IBM M1015 that was flashed successfully to FW19.00.00 Bios 7.37.00, under the X9SCM-F to an older firmware/bios? I tried just doing the sas2flsh -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom But i get an error that its an older version, and cant do it. So in the state that my M1015 is already on IT mode with newer bios and firmware, what would be the correct procedure? like the beggining? megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin megarec -cleanflash 0 Thanks for any suggestions, Quote Link to comment
BetaQuasi Posted July 3, 2014 Author Share Posted July 3, 2014 Anyone know what would be the procedure to flash an IBM M1015 that was flashed successfully to FW19.00.00 Bios 7.37.00, under the X9SCM-F to an older firmware/bios? Just to document this here (as Abula contacted me via PM and I am very time poor these days), it is indeed possible to flash older versions by first wiping the BIOS with the megarec commands. Quote Link to comment
moose Posted July 26, 2014 Share Posted July 26, 2014 Thanks again BetaQuasi for the excellent guide! I thought I'd post what I did to upgrade my bios & firmware with a Linux installer, following your guide: To upgrade M1015 card (already flashed/changed to a LSI9211-8i card) bios and firmware: 1. Download "9211-8i_Package_P19_IR_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows" (in firmware section) at: http://www.lsi.com/products/host-bus-adapters/pages/lsi-sas-9211-8i.aspx 2. Download "Installer_P19_for_Linux" (in firmware section) at: http://www.lsi.com/products/host-bus-adapters/pages/lsi-sas-9211-8i.aspx 3. Unzip both files downloaded from the LSI website. Copy "sas2flash", "2118it.bin" and "mptsas2.rom" from the 2 unzipped archives to a temporary folder on your unraid flash drive. I created a temporary directory called "linux" at /boot/linux 4. (Note: To copy the 3 files to /boot/linux I used WinSCP to create a FTP session between my local PC and the unRAID server.) 5. Use PuTTY to telnet to the unraid server. Navigate to the /boot/linux folder. 6. Execute this command to perform the firmware and bios upgrade: "sas2flash -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom" 7. (Note the Linux installer is called "sas2flash" instead of the UEFI installer "sas2flsh") 8. See output of my upgrade process below. Artoo-Detoo login: root Password: Linux 3.9.11p-unRAID. root@Artoo-Detoo:~# cd /boot/linux root@Artoo-Detoo:/boot/linux# ls 2118it.bin* mptsas2.rom* sas2flash* root@Artoo-Detoo:/boot/linux# sas2flash -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom LSI Corporation SAS2 Flash Utility Version 19.00.00.00 (2014.03.17) Copyright (c) 2008-2014 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved Advanced Mode Set Adapter Selected is a LSI SAS: SAS2008(B2) Executing Operation: Flash Firmware Image Firmware Image has a Valid Checksum. Firmware Version 19.00.00.00 Firmware Image compatible with Controller. Valid NVDATA Image found. NVDATA Version 11.00.00.00 Checking for a compatible NVData image... NVDATA Device ID and Chip Revision match verified. NVDATA Versions Compatible. Valid Initialization Image verified. Valid BootLoader Image verified. Beginning Firmware Download... Firmware Download Successful. Verifying Download... Firmware Flash Successful. Resetting Adapter... Adapter Successfully Reset. Executing Operation: Flash BIOS Image Validating BIOS Image... BIOS Header Signature is Valid BIOS Image has a Valid Checksum. BIOS PCI Structure Signature Valid. BIOS Image Compatible with the SAS Controller. Attempting to Flash BIOS Image... Verifying Download... Flash BIOS Image Successful. Updated BIOS Version in BIOS Page 3. Finished Processing Commands Successfully. Exiting SAS2Flash. root@Artoo-Detoo:/boot/linux# Quote Link to comment
HAVOC Posted November 30, 2014 Share Posted November 30, 2014 Tried your steps with the flash utility, but I get this error. Tower login: root Password: Linux 3.16.3-unRAID. Last login: Sun Nov 30 06:22:12 -0500 2014 on pts/0 from 192.168.1.4. root@Tower:~# cd /boot/linux root@Tower:/boot/linux# ls 2118it.bin* mptsas2.rom* sas2flash* root@Tower:/boot/linux# sas2flash -o -listall -bash: ./sas2flash: cannot execute binary file root@Tower:/boot/linux# Quote Link to comment
HiSoC8Y Posted December 1, 2014 Share Posted December 1, 2014 Hi I built my system two years back, and it is: -Supermicro X9SCM-IIF-O -Intel RAID Twenty-four port Expander Card RES2SV240 -Dell H200 PERC card. unRAID running as a VM on ESXi 5.5, passthruing the card to unRAID. I'm looking to change the Dell H200 card, due to the # of HDDs it supports. First, i'm looking for a reliable replacement card, any suggestion? Price doesn't matter so much, but i need something with excellent performance and easy to maintain (in terms of firmware and flashing tasks), and above all, i need best performance. i'm looking at LSI MegaRAID as one option. UPDATE 06/12/2014 I ordered an LSI 8240-8i card. Second, I can't remember the versions of the Intel expander neither the motherboard, In case I get a new card, is it suggested to upgrade all the three components to latest stable releases? Thanks Quote Link to comment
HiSoC8Y Posted December 9, 2014 Share Posted December 9, 2014 seems no one is on the forum nowadays lol any guide/help pls? Quote Link to comment
unTER Posted January 8, 2015 Share Posted January 8, 2015 seems no one is on the forum nowadays lol any guide/help pls? Sorry, I'm unable to help. Quote Link to comment
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