LSI 9207-8i turns out to be Dell OEM, not detected - support options?

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Eds89

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Feb 21, 2016
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Hi All,

Purchased an LSI 9207-8i from eBay, brand new, listed as a plain old LSI card. Connected it to 4 different machines, none of which sees the card at all.

The card does seem to be receiving power, as the heatsink is warm to the touch. I tried to contact LSI/Broadcom for support or replacement, but they told me it is a Dell OEM card :mad:

I don't think Dell will support me as I didn't buy from them, and the card shows as unavailable on their support website. I have gone back to LSI, but am not hopeful.

Firstly, does anyone think the card is salvagable? I am wondering if there is custom Dell firmware preventing it from being detected, and I might be able to flash it to the plain old LSI firmware?
Failing that, what do people recommend as my next step? Return it and ask for another?

Cheers
Eds
 

Terry Kennedy

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Jun 25, 2015
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Firstly, does anyone think the card is salvagable? I am wondering if there is custom Dell firmware preventing it from being detected, and I might be able to flash it to the plain old LSI firmware?
Does the system POST with the card in, and just doesn't see the card? It may not have a BIOS installed. Try downloading the sas2flash utility from LSI (or whatever their name is this week) and see if it detects the card - it should find all cards, even ones with OEM firmware.

Note that if this really is a Dell card, it probably isn't 100% identical to the LSI reference design. Using generic firmware on it will likely disable any port / overall activity LEDs and may swap the numbering of the 2 SAS connectors.
Failing that, what do people recommend as my next step? Return it and ask for another?
If none of the above helps, probably. Dell cards can do odd things with the SMBus pins (PCIe B5 and B6) and sometimes you need to tape over them to make a system happy. But I'd ask for a non-OEM card instead of fiddling with "try this and maybe it will work" stuff.
 

Eds89

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Yeah system posts without issue. No OpRom, although I am unclear whether I would expect it to have one or not.

Running sas2flash it says "No LSI SAS adapters found! Limited Command Set Available!" so I am assuming this indicates it's dead?
The BIOSes of the machines I have connected it to don't even think there is a PCIe device in the slot.
 

nthu9280

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Feb 3, 2016
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MegaCLI will only work on RAID cards. This is a HBA.
If megarec can see it, it can be flashed.
May need sas2flash (14 or below) to flash older FW first and the to P20


Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
 

Eds89

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Does MegaRec have to be run from DOS?
Is it worth trying sas2flash P14 given the card isn't even detected by the P16 version?
 

Eds89

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Sadly Megrec says it cannot find the card either.

It did suggest powering on after checking jumper settings. I can only see a 4 pin header on the card with no jumper on it so not sure if relevant?

EDIT: J3 4 pin header looks to be UART?
Doc I found said the card should blink a heartbeat LED indicating ready. I can't see this. Think the card is dead :(
 
Last edited:

pricklypunter

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It's dead, return it to the seller and tell them to send you a tested/ working one, life is too short to be pissing about with duff cards :)
 

Eds89

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Think I'll spend a bit more and get one from a UK seller on Amazon. Got to send this one back to China o_O Probably why it was a third of the price of Amazon.
 

pricklypunter

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Certainly buying a card from a reputable IT recycler or ebay seller with decent feedback, that's not located in Italy or China, would be my first choice :)
 

Eds89

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Shame really, as the card is definitely brand new, it just wasn't listed as OEM :( Nevermind, lesson learnt.
 

Eds89

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I finally received my new adaptor, which is detected on the two machines I tried it in (Including showing me the oprom).
Problem is, it has P15 firmware on it, but sas2flash doesn't detect the card, nor does megarec.

Any thoughts on how I should go about updating the firmware if the update utility cannot find it?
 

nthu9280

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Feb 3, 2016
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That is unusual. If you are able to see BIOS / during POST, megarec should see it. Since this is a HBA, should not even need to use Megarec.
Assume you are using freeDOS bootable USB and not a Windows cmd prompt.

Simple sas2flsh.exe DOS (or Sas2flash.efi if your board is UEFI) should be able to flash it. Sometimes, you may need to use P14 or older version to erase and then go to latest FW. I encountered this on my previous deal I posted. That was a HP H220.

Also, if your SAS2308 chip is C0 stepping, you need to use FW for 9205-8e (I know it's the FW for external) :)
D1 stepping should flash to 9207-8i fine.



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Eds89

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Ah, ok, when running from a FreeDOS bootable USB key, sas2flsh can see the controller. Just didn't seem to work when running from within Windows.

Do I need to flash the P20 BIOS before doing the P20 firmware?
Can you confirm commands to run are:
Code:
sas2flsh -biosall mptsas.rom
sas2flsh -fwall 9207-8.bin
EDIT: Ran the above, seems to have worked fine!
Thanks for your help everyone!
 
Last edited:

rmflint

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Dec 12, 2017
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That is unusual. If you are able to see BIOS / during POST, megarec should see it. Since this is a HBA, should not even need to use Megarec.
Assume you are using freeDOS bootable USB and not a Windows cmd prompt.

Simple sas2flsh.exe DOS (or Sas2flash.efi if your board is UEFI) should be able to flash it. Sometimes, you may need to use P14 or older version to erase and then go to latest FW. I encountered this on my previous deal I posted. That was a HP H220.

Also, if your SAS2308 chip is C0 stepping, you need to use FW for 9205-8e (I know it's the FW for external) :)
D1 stepping should flash to 9207-8i fine.

T-

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
Can you help me with my HP branded LSI 92074i4e flashed to it-mode. I was able to erase and flash to it-mode using lsi’s version 20 firmware (I did not reflash the bios) specifically for 92074i4e. It shows that it is in it mode with sas2flash -list but when I try to boot into os my disk do not appear in bios and are not detected upon boot. I trie this in my Supermicro and dell servers with the same results. When I swap the card with my flash M1015 everything shows up fine. Do you think I should try the 9205-8e firmware? In researching these hp branded LSI cards it seems like there is all kinds of issues reflashing them. I would really like to save this card!
 

nthu9280

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Can you help me with my HP branded LSI 92074i4e flashed to it-mode. I was able to erase and flash to it-mode using lsi’s version 20 firmware (I did not reflash the bios) specifically for 92074i4e. It shows that it is in it mode with sas2flash -list but when I try to boot into os my disk do not appear in bios and are not detected upon boot. I trie this in my Supermicro and dell servers with the same results. When I swap the card with my flash M1015 everything shows up fine. Do you think I should try the 9205-8e firmware? In researching these hp branded LSI cards it seems like there is all kinds of issues reflashing them. I would really like to save this card!
If your boot drive is attached to the SAS HBA, you need to flash the bios.
 

rmflint

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Dec 12, 2017
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If your boot drive is attached to the SAS HBA, you need to flash the bios.
I am a bit confused on the need to flash the bios back. I plan to use this server with zfs and some flashing tutorials say not to flash the bios since it is not needed and slows down boot time. I can’t remember if I flashed the bios to my M1015. I guess I am slowly learning (the hard way) about flashing raid cards but I am trying to understand the reasons behind what works and what doesn’t! My experience is in software not hardware.

I will try flashing the bios and see what happens :)
 

rmflint

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Dec 12, 2017
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I am a bit confused on the need to flash the bios back. I plan to use this server with zfs and some flashing tutorials say not to flash the bios since it is not needed and slows down boot time. I can’t remember if I flashed the bios to my M1015. I guess I am slowly learning (the hard way) about flashing raid cards but I am trying to understand the reasons behind what works and what doesn’t! My experience is in software not hardware.

I will try flashing the bios and see what happens :)
I flashed the bios to the card and now my array shows up on boot and is accessible to os.
Thanks for the tip!
 

xOWL

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Jan 21, 2022
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Hello guys,

I have a PERC H710 Mini - D1, followed instruction from H710 D1 Mini - Fohdeesha Docs , everything goes fine, all disks are visible, the issues which I'm encountering that I'm not able to write to any of the disks, I have tried firmware version 20 and 16, without any succes. I have restored original firmware; I was able to create a RAID array with all the disks, perform I/O, etc. I will need the controller in IT mode on this server to passthrough the disks for TrueNAS.
Any ideas way the disks are in "read-only" mode/what else to try?

Controller info

Code:
root@debian:~# lspci -v | grep -B 19 mpt

03:00.0 Serial Attached SCSI controller: Broadcom / LSI SAS2308 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2 (rev 05)
        DeviceName: Integrated RAID
        Subsystem: Dell SAS2308 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 42, NUMA node 0
        I/O ports at fc00 [size=256]
        Memory at ddff0000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
        Memory at ddf80000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256K]
        Expansion ROM at dd000000 [disabled] [size=1M]
        Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3
        Capabilities: [68] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
        Capabilities: [d0] Vital Product Data
        Capabilities: [a8] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
        Capabilities: [c0] MSI-X: Enable+ Count=16 Masked-
        Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
        Capabilities: [1e0] Secondary PCI Express
        Capabilities: [1c0] Power Budgeting <?>
        Capabilities: [190] Dynamic Power Allocation <?>
        Capabilities: [148] Alternative Routing-ID Interpretation (ARI)
        Kernel driver in use: mpt3sas
        Kernel modules: mpt3sas
Code:
root@debian:~# info
LSI Corporation SAS2 Flash Utility
Version 20.00.00.00 (2014.09.18)
Copyright (c) 2008-2014 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved

        Adapter Selected is a LSI SAS: SAS2308_2(D1)

        Controller Number              : 0
        Controller                     : SAS2308_2(D1)
        PCI Address                    : 00:03:00:00
        SAS Address                    : 5b083fe-x-xxxx-xxxx
        NVDATA Version (Default)       : 10.00.00.04
        NVDATA Version (Persistent)    : 10.00.00.04
        Firmware Product ID            : 0x2214 (IT)
        Firmware Version               : 16.00.00.00
        NVDATA Vendor                  : LSI
        NVDATA Product ID              : SAS9207-8i
        BIOS Version                   : 07.31.00.00
        UEFI BSD Version               : N/A
        FCODE Version                  : N/A
        Board Name                     : SAS9207-8i
        Board Assembly                 : N/A
        Board Tracer Number            : N/A

        Finished Processing Commands Successfully.
        Exiting SAS2Flash.
- Disks info

Code:
root@debian:~# fdisk -l | grep TiB
Disk /dev/sda: 3.64 TiB, 4000787030016 bytes, 7814037168 sectors
Disk /dev/sdk: 3.64 TiB, 4000787030016 bytes, 7814037168 sectors
Disk /dev/sdf: 3.64 TiB, 4000787030016 bytes, 7814037168 sectors
Disk /dev/sdg: 3.64 TiB, 4000787030016 bytes, 7814037168 sectors
Disk /dev/sde: 3.64 TiB, 4000787030016 bytes, 7814037168 sectors
Disk /dev/sdj: 3.64 TiB, 4000787030016 bytes, 7814037168 sectors
Disk /dev/sdi: 3.64 TiB, 4000787030016 bytes, 7814037168 sectors
Disk /dev/sdb: 3.64 TiB, 4000787030016 bytes, 7814037168 sectors
Disk /dev/sdm: 3.64 TiB, 4000787030016 bytes, 7814037168 sectors
Disk /dev/sdh: 3.64 TiB, 4000787030016 bytes, 7814037168 sectors
Disk /dev/sdc: 3.64 TiB, 4000787030016 bytes, 7814037168 sectors
Disk /dev/sdd: 3.64 TiB, 4000787030016 bytes, 7814037168 sectors
- On any device if I try to perform any change, I get these kinds of errors:

Code:
[  619.830198] sd 0:0:6:0: [sdg] tag#10091 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE cmd_age=0s
[  619.830963] sd 0:0:6:0: [sdg] tag#10091 Sense Key : Aborted Command [current] [descriptor]
[  619.831722] sd 0:0:6:0: [sdg] tag#10091 Add. Sense: Nak received
[  619.832478] sd 0:0:6:0: [sdg] tag#10091 CDB: Read(16) 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 00 08 00 00
[  619.833243] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sdg, sector 8 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x80700 phys_seg 1 prio class 0