SAS9201-8i slow posting...


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Define "forever".

 

I have the -16i version. I wouldn't say it takes forever. But it does take 10 seconds or so, maybe longer.

 

It should display instructions for entering the card's BIOS program. Forgot the key required. TAB, F6, C-B, something.

 

It is possible that the card contains some weird settings from the prior owner. You might go in there and look around. And reset if that is appropriate.

 

If you hook up a drive, does it work?

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Did you go into the card BIOS as I suggested and see if there was a reset option or any strange settings you could change?

 

2 minutes is not exactly forever :). Even if it takes that long, I'd still be asking if the card works with disks attached.

 

I have an M1015 patched to IT mode that that takes quite a while to POST. It even misses its initialization from time to time and requires a reboot (normally on first boot from power down). But it works and because server is seldomly booted, is only a minor annoyance.

 

Being an eBay purchase, you want to quickly determine if it is defective. I'd put aside the long POST and put it through its paces.

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I did attach a disk and it saw it fine.  I was also able to set the MB bios to not run the storage bios.  So I'm back to fast booting.. Now that means I can' boot from this card...   But I wasn't planning on that anyway..  Once I get things all set I might re-enable it because I don't care how long it takes to boot if I'm rebooting once a month or less.  But for now it was

VERY annoying when I'm rebooting every 5 minutes!!! :D

 

Just for grins I'll try it in another system and see if maybe the UEFI is causing it to run extremely slow (some sort of emulated mode??)  

 

I did enter the control section of the card bios and I saw nothing funky..

 

Question...  This card, by default, runs IT firmware, right?  I shouldn't have to re-flash it???

 

And thanks bjp!

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6 minutes ago, jbuszkie said:

I did attach a disk and it saw it fine.  I was also able to set the MB bios to not run the storage bios.  So I'm back to fast booting.. Now that means I can' boot from this card...   But I wasn't planning on that anyway..  Once I get things all set I might re-enable it because I don't care how long it takes to boot if I'm rebooting once a month or less.  But for now it was

VERY annoying when I'm rebooting every 5 minutes!!! :D

 

I tend to disable the boot options on my addon controllers. Only issue has been occasionally it means the option to enter the BIOS bootup config can be suppressed. I have some kinda funky experiences with interaction in boot up sequence between multiple controllers that is an art more than a skill to resolve, with a fair amount of trial and error. Sticking to same manufacturer can really help! I found that the SuperMicro cards were particularly susceptible to not playing nice (for example, I was never able to get the SM SASLP2 to get through BIOS POST process with an IBM M1015).

 

6 minutes ago, jbuszkie said:

Question...  This card, by default, runs IT firmware, right?  I shouldn't have to re-flash it???

 

And thanks bjp!

 

This is a pure HBA. No RAID functionality. No need to patch with IT firmware. It IS possible to update the firmware to a later version, but I am reluctant to do that "just because". I take the "if it ain't broke" perspective on firmware patching. Although if the release notes of new firmware provide compelling reasons to upgrade, I take that into consideration.

 

The last truly compelling firmware update (on an Areca controller) was to add support for drives over 2T. So compelling for me is a pretty high bar. :)

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I don't know if I have the latest.. but it was saying 2011..  Maybe I'll look into it to see what's out there and if the release notes show anything "compelling" with the latest release.

If it can see my 8T drives and run them at speed, then I'm not going to touch anything! O.o

 

Now I'll have to search the forum again to try to remember how to transfer all my disks to a new machine without losing any data! :o

 

Jim

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10 hours ago, bjp999 said:

If you are using the same stick, yes. In fact it might be even simpler that that. Just booting with the same stick should maintain your array configuration.

It did!!  like magic!!!  New MB.  New CPU.  New Memory. New storage card.

Bam!  The array came up ready to run!  I was shocked!  (and very happy!!!!)

 

Thank You Limetech for making this robust!  I remember in the past that the software often times didn't see moved drives very well and we did have to new config and trust parity

And then there was that funky command "set something something.."

 

:D:D:D

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Every boot is a fresh install. And the install will recognize your current hardware and install Linux correctly for that MB, processor, controller, etc. So it should not be a big surprise that it works as it does.

 

The only time you'd have to do what I said at first - redefine the array and trust parity - is is the USB stick had failed and you needed to rebuild it.

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For anyone with a LSI 9207 8i controller and you have slow boot, or the long wait for the card to initialize, you can update to the current bios and firmware to resolve the issue.  I have Supermicro X11SSM-F and when booting, it would get to the LSI screen and exactly 3:04 minutes later it would finally say Initializing.....

 

My 9207 came with the following versions:

 

MPT2BIOS 7.37.00.00

Firmware 19.00.00.00 IT

NVDATA 11.00.00.06

 

After updating using file   9207_8i_Package_P20_IR_IT_FW_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows.zip    https://www.broadcom.com/products/storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9207-8i#downloads

 

New MPT2BIOS ver is 7.39.02.00

New firmware 20.00.07.00 IT

New NVDATA  14.01.00.06

 

The update will also update the name from LSI to Avago.  Now it takes about 10 seconds for the card to start Initializing, so that problem is fixed!  I did not change any settings, all are default.  With it being so fast, I didn't bother to disable the boot function stuff.

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  • 9 months later...

I also had this issue with the LSI 9207-8i controller taking painfully long to post which led me to this thread. Additionally, I was experiencing slower IO speeds on my 4TB WD Red drives and updating the firmware and bios resolved that as well. 

 

My 9207 came with:

 

MPT2BIOS 7.37.00.00

Firmware 19.00.00.00 IT

NVDATA 14.00.00.00

 

@Switchblade got me in the right direction, but didn't provide any instructions on how to accomplish this. Additionally, there are a few articles that explain this process, but were super old and I wasn't sure if it would work. The article I followed that worked for me was here, but in case it isn't available later I'll summarize here:

 

** Note: It's recommended to upgrade the same versions of the bios and firmware. The versions are in the file names preceded by P (ie P20)

 

1. Go to the download page for the 9207-8i here

2. Under BIOS download the file: UEFI_BSD_Pxx

3. Under Firmware download the files: Installer_Pxx_for_UEFI and 9207-8i_Package_Pxx_IR_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows

4. Get a USB drive formatted as FAT32

4. Extract the files.

5. In UEFI_BSD_Pxx, copy the BIOS for the updater (x64sas2.rom) to the root of the USB

6. In Installer_Pxx_for_UEFI, copy the firmware updater (sas2flash.efi) to the root of the USB

7. In 9207-8i_Package_Pxx_IR_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows, copy the firmware 9207-8.bin to the root of the USB

8. Boot (or reboot) server to UEFI shell 

9. Change to the correct partition, mine was fs0 so in the command line I just typed:

fs0

10. Optionally, you can see all installed LSI controllers with the bios and firmware versions. Helpful if you have multiple controllers installed.

sas2flash.efi -listall

11. Update the bios and firmware in the same command. The -c flag specifies the controller to flash if you have more than 1 you can specify which by listing the controllers in the above step and specifying in the command

sas2flash.efi -c 0 -b x64sas2.rom -f 9207-8.bin

12. Double check the flash worked. On my first attempt I did see the console output showing the flash was successful, however, it was not updated. 

sas2flash.efi -listall

You should see that the bios and firmware are updated. 

 

13. Reboot

Edited by bokchoy
Added reboot step
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  • 3 months later...

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