Can't get LSI 9300-8i to work in Supermicro X10 board

[Jeff Robertson]

Hi, I purchased a new LSI 9300-8i HBA and plugged it into my microatx Supermicro X10 board. On boot I get a blinking cursor for a minute or so then an error about how it can't load the Avago MPT BIOS. Any thoughts? Is there an option in the Supermicro BIOS I need to set? I've swapped it between all three PCIe slots with no luck. I flashed it to the latest IT firmware/bios using a different computer but it does me no good unless I can get it to work in my server. Here is an image of the exact error:

 

[darkconz]

So you are saying it works in the other comp which you flashed the latest IT firmware on but not the X10? Did the flash go wrong? Have you verified that it is working in your other comp still?

 

[Jeff Robertson]

That is correct, it works in my bench computer but not in the X10. In the bench system it throws the same error when placed in one slot and works perfectly when placed in a different slot. The error occurred out of the box before the firmware update, that didn't seem to make a difference. I don't know why a specific slot would cause the issue, maybe I ended up with a bad card? I did test it with a sata drive I had lying around and it worked fine in the bench system so it seems like it should work.

 

[Stefan75]

If you don't need the bios you can try sas2flsh -o -e 5

 

[Jeff Robertson]

Interesting. So I'm not terribly familiar with LSI SAS controllers. Is there a reason I wouldn't need the bios? Also, I used sas3flash (or sas3flsh) to update the card, I think sas2flsh is for their older cards? If I can remove the bios and have it function that would be great. The card will be used in an S2D cluster which needs direct access to the drives.

Thanks!

 

[Stefan75]

You only need the bios if you want to use hardware raid or boot from a disk connected to this controller.
Removing the bios also speeds up the boot time because there's no initialization.
The OS will access the card/disks directly anyways.

 

[Jeff Robertson]

Ok, finally got around to erasing the bios and this is what I get:

PS C:\Windows\system32> sas3flash -o -e 5
Avago Technologies SAS3 Flash Utility
Version 16.00.00.00 (2017.05.02)
Copyright 2008-2017 Avago Technologies. All rights reserved.
Advanced Mode Set
Adapter Selected is a Avago SAS: SAS3008(C0)
Executing Operation: Erase Flash
Erasing Boot Services Region...
Erase Flash Command not Supported on this platform.
Firmware Returned Exception. IOCStatus=0x1, IOCLogInfo=0x0
Due to error remaining commands will not be executed.
Unable to Process Commands.
Exiting SAS3Flash.

Does the sas3flash command need different arguments than sas2flsh?

Thanks!

 

[Stefan75]

Erase Flash Command not Supported on this platform.
Does the sas3flash command need different arguments than sas2flsh?
Thanks!

Maybe you're using the DOS binaries in Windows.
Either boot DOS/EFI or use the Windows binaries (zip from Broadcom website).

 

[Jeff Robertson]

After some more testing I was able to erase the bios using the UEFI shell. No luck however. Turns out I can get the card to work perfectly fine in a PCIe 2.0 slot but the moment I put it in a 3.0 slot it either hangs at boot or after erasing the BIOS shows up as non functional in windows. I may have just come across a bum card.