Help needed after a bad flash of a SUN F20 Flash accelerator card

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zhu

New Member
Nov 28, 2015
6
14
3
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Some time ago, I purchased on eBay a cheap SUN F20 Flash accelerator.

The card flash was working fine but the "external" SAS ports were not working.

In a stupid move, I tried to flash a generic LSI 1068E firmware on the card. The SAS ports were working fine but the flash modules were no longer recognized.

MatrixMjK helped me by providing an updated firmware for the card that I did try to flash. The external port were deactivated but the flash modules could not be initialized. "lsiutil" tells "Unaddressable device detected"

Before my initial flash, I made a backup of the card firmware and bios but I forgot the NVDATA. When I restore my backups I end-up in the same situation as above (Unaddressable device detected). So I guess something important was in the NVDATA.

If someone else has this card, I would be very grateful if he could provide me with a full backup of his card flash.
I guess the following should do it (if there is a better option, please advise)
sasflash -ubios bios.bin -ufirmware firmware.bin -ufwbackup fwbackup.bin -unvdata nvdata.bin

By the way, if you have this card and also have the "disabled port issue", you just need to use lsiutil function 13. Change SAS IO Unit settings to enable them (but I found that too late)....
 

kroem

Active Member
Aug 16, 2014
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Dude! I'm at this moment sitting here, puling my hair trying to understand WHY I CANT SEE THE DRIVES ON THE HBA!? Had no idea they were disabled...

Hmm, still not seeing the drives though - are there anymore hoops I have to go through to see em?

EDIT - A reboot did it - thank you for helping me (without knowing it ;) )

(of course I'll send you dumps from my card - I need to do it from sasflash, or can I do it in LSIutil?)
 

kroem

Active Member
Aug 16, 2014
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Have to say I'm not sure it worked as intended, but files are here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8318052/STH-F20.zip


Code:
root@fileserver Installer_P21_for_Linux/sasflash_linux_i686_x86-64_rel# ./sasflash -listall

****************************************************************************
    LSI Corporation SAS FLASH Utility.

    SASFlash Version 1.30.00.00 (2011.08.24)

    Copyright (c) 2006-2011 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved.
****************************************************************************

        Adapter Selected is a LSI SAS 1068E(B3):

Num   Ctlr      FW Ver     NVDATA   x86-BIOS     EFI-BSD    PCI Addr
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

1   1068E(B3)  01.27.96.00  2d.02  06.26.00.00    No Image   00:03:00:00

root@fileserver Installer_P21_for_Linux/sasflash_linux_i686_x86-64_rel# ./sasflash -ubios bios.bin -ufirmware firmware.bin -ufwbackup fwbackup.bin -unvdata nvdata.bin

****************************************************************************
    LSI Corporation SAS FLASH Utility.

    SASFlash Version 1.30.00.00 (2011.08.24)

    Copyright (c) 2006-2011 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved.
****************************************************************************

        Adapter Selected is a LSI SAS 1068E(B3):

        Executing Operation: Upload BIOS

        Upload Succesful!

        Executing Operation: Upload Firmware

        Upload Succesful!

        Operation not found: 05000025.
        Operation not found: 05000024.
        Unable to Process Commands.
        Exiting SASFlash.
root@fileserver Installer_P21_for_Linux/sasflash_linux_i686_x86-64_rel# ls
bios.bin  firmware.bin  fwbackup.bin  nvdata.bin  sasflash  sasflash_relnotes.doc
 

zhu

New Member
Nov 28, 2015
6
14
3
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Great ! I am glad that my mistake has been useful and came just in time for you !

Thanks for the dump ! It did not work for backup firmware and nvdata, my mistake, the "-o "switch for advanced mode was missing

sasflash -o -ufwbackup fwbackup.bin -unvdata nvdata.bin

In addition, may I also request the output of :

sasflash -o -showvpd

Thanks
 

kroem

Active Member
Aug 16, 2014
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Ah ok! I re-did all files: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8318052/STH-F20-2.zip

Code:
root@fileserver Installer_P21_for_Linux/sasflash_linux_i686_x86-64_rel# ./sasflash -o -ubios bios.bin -ufirmware firmware.bin -ufwbackup fwbackup.bin -unvdata nvdata.bin

****************************************************************************
    LSI Corporation SAS FLASH Utility.

    SASFlash Version 1.30.00.00 (2011.08.24)

    Copyright (c) 2006-2011 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved.
****************************************************************************

        Advanced Mode Set

        Adapter Selected is a LSI SAS 1068E(B3):

        Executing Operation: Upload BIOS

        Upload Succesful!

        Executing Operation: Upload Firmware

        Upload Succesful!

        Executing Operation: Upload Backup Firmware Area

        Upload Succesful!

        Executing Operation: Upload NVDATA

        Upload Succesful!


Finished Processing Commands Successfully.
        Exiting SASFlash.
root@fileserver Installer_P21_for_Linux/sasflash_linux_i686_x86-64_rel# ./sasflash -o -showvpd

****************************************************************************
    LSI Corporation SAS FLASH Utility.

    SASFlash Version 1.30.00.00 (2011.08.24)

    Copyright (c) 2006-2011 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved.
****************************************************************************

        Advanced Mode Set

        Adapter Selected is a LSI SAS 1068E(B3):


===============================================================================
VITAL PRODUCT DATA
==================
(  )  Product Name:             Sun HBA, 4 FMOD slots, 2 internal Ports
(PN)  Board Part Number:        511-1500-02
(EC)  Engineering Date Code:    R50
(SN)  Serial Number:            0111APO-1005AU00FX
(RV)  Checksum:                 0x3f
(MN)  Manufacturing ID:         Sun Microsystems, Inc.
===============================================================================

Finished Processing Commands Successfully.
        Exiting SASFlash.
 

istqian

New Member
Jun 9, 2016
14
14
3
Fukuoka, Japan
I did the same stupid thing as zhu did before!
I don't know how to flash back.

If you own F20, Please DO NOT flash LSI IT firmware. it will kill your card.

anyone has experience on how to recovery this card?
please help us!
 

zhu

New Member
Nov 28, 2015
6
14
3
54
Unfortunately on my side, all I can say is that I tried a bunch of things and none of them worked. My card rests in peace in a box...
 

fake-name

Active Member
Feb 28, 2017
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144
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I just ran into this too (after being dumb and attempting to cross-flash my own F20).

@kroem - All your links are dead. Any chance you could re-upload them?
 

fake-name

Active Member
Feb 28, 2017
180
144
43
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Thanks!

Not much luck, unfortunately. One thing I noticed is that I can't see a way to *program* the nvdata segment.

The documentation for `sasflash` does discus the `concat` option that supposedly appends a nvdata segment to the firmware image, but trying to use it fails with an error.

My guess at the moment is that the image I applied to the card overwrote the nvdata segment with the nvdata for another model, and fixing it requires a actual manufacturer-sourced firmware+nvdata image.

I tried the boring things like just manually concatenating the nvdata onto the end of the firmware prior to programming it, but it just produces a checksum error.

I'm poking about in the sasflash binary to see if I can figure out what's breaking the `concat` option.