IBM M1015 Experiences

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Mark_T

New Member
Apr 23, 2012
17
0
1
UEFI flash

I found on the Lime Tech forums (http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12767.360) that there is a workaround for this "Failed to initialize PAL" error by flashing in the UEFI system environment. I tried to make a UEFI bootable USB using this link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39qPm1rNnWk.oes anyone know how to to this? I tried but I wasn`t able to flash to LSI 9211-8i. I wasn`t even able to go into UEFI.
A step by step tutorial will be highly appreciated. I really hope it`s possible, so I can avoid buying an old motherboard just for this.
Thanks.
 

Mark_T

New Member
Apr 23, 2012
17
0
1
LSI 9211-8i flash via the EFI Shell

I finally managed to flash my M1015 to LSI 9211-8i in IR mode using my Asus P9X79 WS, the same motherboard that give me headaches in the native DOS prompt.
I was able to flash it via the UEFI shell. The method I used it`s a simple one and I think it should work for everyone who had the "Failed to initialize PAL" error.


You can read below all the steps I`ve made, starting in DOS and finishing via the EFI Shell:
1. I downloaded the latest updates (sas2008.zip) for LSI 9211-8i from mobilenvidia`s laptopvideo2go.com forum: http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/topic/29059-sas2008-lsi92409211-firmware-files/page__hl__m1015. I was a bit lazy and I found very convenient to download everything in one go. Thanks mobilenvidia!
2. Then using a USB stick I created a MS-DOS Bootable Flash Drive. You can finf how to do it here: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/46707-ms-dos-bootable-flash-drive-create.html
3. After that I extracted the content from sas2008.zip on the USB stick.
4. I set up in Bios to boot from the USB and in DOS prompt, I followed the instructions from the first post in the earlier mentioned thread:

Convert LSI9240(IBM M1015) to a LSI9211-IR mode
Type in the following exactly:
megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
megarec -cleanflash 0
<reboot, back to USB stick>

5. In DOS, after reboot using "sas2flsh -o -f 2118ir.bin -b mptsas2.rom" command I got the infamous "ERROR: Failed to initialize PAL. Exiting program".
6. I went to ArchWiki, to the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) page.
The web address is: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface#UEFI_Shell
Scroll down to "UEFI Shell " and download "x86_64 UEFI Shell 2.0 (Beta)" and "x86_64 UEFI Shell 1.0 (Old)"
To flash my card I used "x86_64 UEFI Shell 1.0 (Old)".
I renamed the "Shell_Full.efi" to "shellx64.efi" and copied on the USB stick, over the previous files from the "sas2008.zip" archive.
7. I also had to copy on the stick the sas2flash.efi program. You can download the "Installer_P13_for_UEFI " from the LSI support page: http://www.lsi.com/channel/products/storagecomponents/Pages/LSISAS9211-8i.aspx
8. Attach the USB, restart the PC and go in the UEFI Bios. Check if the UEFI USB drive is your first boot option. On the top right corner click on the "Exit" button. You will get a new menu and the last option is "Launch EFI Shell from filesystem device" Click on it and you will go in the UEFI Shell.
Here I was able to continue the flashing procedure:

sas2flash.efi -o -f 2118ir.bin -b mptsas2.rom
sas2flash.efi -o -sasadd 500605bxxxxxxxxx (x= numbers for SAS address)

9. Done.


I thought it`ll be a good idea to post in detail all the steps, especially for guys like me, who don`t do everyday things like this. :)

Also, a big thanks to Servethehome.com for the great article "IBM ServeRAID M1015: Performance of the LSI 9220-8i". That was the article that pointed me to the M1015. Also, thanks mobilenvidia for putting all together. It helped me a lot.
Now I`m happy, I have a little monster ready to chew all the data I`m going to feed him.
Cheers,
 
Last edited:

Mark_T

New Member
Apr 23, 2012
17
0
1
No problem.

Initially, my intention was to go with crucial, but I decided to make a financial effort and I ended up with 4x256GB Samsung 830.
Have to say that M1105 is a lovely card.
AS-SSD: Seq: 1551 MB/s read -- 1527 MB/s write.
ATTO: 1900 MB/s read -- 1600 MB/s write.
 

jlray

New Member
Jul 24, 2012
2
0
0
One question regarding cross flash.

What's the difference between sas2flash and MegaCLI? Can I use MegaCLI to flash the IT firmware?
 

matt_br

New Member
Aug 7, 2012
5
1
3
Hello,

I'm new here, and I could use some help from "the guys who know" ;-)
I'm desperately trying to convert my M1015 to lsi IT firmware. I've followed all the steps described by Mark-T but it doesn't work;l
I have a ASUS P9X79WS, so I use the sas2flash.efi that I managed to find, because the links on the LSI site don't work.
The first steps in DOS work without a problem, but the "sas2flash.efi -o -f 2118ir.bin -b mptsas2.rom"
Keeps giving me this error message : Error : Firmware image doesn't support target adapter Device ID (72).

The first steps :
megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
megarec -cleanflash 0
<reboot, back to USB stick>
Both have returned "success".

I'm at a loss here, does anyone have an idea ?

Thanks a lot.

(the system I'm building is based on an Intel S1200BTL and Xeon E3-1240v2 (does have the EFI problem so a chose to try and upgrade the firmware on a proven system that I happen to have : the P9X79WS)
 

mobilenvidia

Moderator
Sep 25, 2011
1,956
212
63
New Zealand
Zip over to LSI, then to products, HBA adapters, LSI9211.
Go into downloads, grab the latest P14 firmware there's on there for IT and IR.
Extract the firmware file, grab the 2118it.bin and mptsas2.rom put them where sas2flsh is.
Now try it again
 

matt_br

New Member
Aug 7, 2012
5
1
3
Thank you.

It seems to have done the trick.
Half of it I should say, I get an error while updating the Bios image, so I suppose there must be a problem with the mptsas2.rom.
I have my controler recognized as a LSI Adapter SAS2, 2008 Falcon, with no boot time Drive detection, but drives are passed through to the system it seems.
I suppose I can leave it in that state ? It's to use with ZFS or windows server 2012 storage spaces ?

Thanks alot, I don't know why I didn't think of doing this in the first place.
 

ugotd8

New Member
Aug 27, 2012
3
0
0
Hi, I'm having an issue with sas2flash.efi. It seems no matter what I do I get "InitShellApp: Application not Started from Shell". I even tried creating a startup.nsh in the root of the USB stick I'm using, in which I put an echo statement to make sure I was in the right place:



I am using an ASUS Rampage IV Extreme X79 motherboard and have an IBM/LSI controller I need to flash to IT. I ended up here after much googling, and after getting errors trying to flash within windows, and then via FreeDOS (PAL error).

Any help or clues would be greatly appreciated.
 

Andreas

Member
Aug 21, 2012
127
1
18
My Asus X79 and Z77 mobo's didn't work either.
Used an old system from the basement (Intel Dual Core 8400) and updated all cards there. Didn't want to spend too much time figuring out what the problem with the modern MBs was. Flashing cards isn't a daily job anyway (at least it shouldn't) ....
rgds,
Andy
 

ugotd8

New Member
Aug 27, 2012
3
0
0
Thanks for the reply, yes, I ended up using FreeDOS on a USB on my SuperMicro mobo and got the erase to work finally.
 

mobilenvidia

Moderator
Sep 25, 2011
1,956
212
63
New Zealand
Strange why ASUS consumer boards have issues with the LSI cards.
My P8Z77 WS board had the issue until BIOS #0703 was released which then fixed it.

It might be an addressing problem as I did notice on of the Mega apps complaining the card had a high unsupported IO address, but still flashed the card.
The I/O address could be out of DOS range ?
I wonder if the system RAM is below 4GB the I/O range issue might be solved, hmmm something to consider and try sometime.
 
Last edited:

RimBlock

Active Member
Sep 18, 2011
837
28
28
Singapore
I have just started a customer build based ont eh 24bay Supermicro SuperChassis 846A-R1200B, 3x IBM M1015s (customer choice, the Intel version would have been cheaper and is the same card), 32GB ECC ram, E3-1230 v2 and various SAS / SATA hard drives. This will be running ESXi 5.0 which will be upgraded to vSphere 5.1 when it is released in a couple of weeks (cant wait for the LACP support etc with the new version).

I have flashed the M1015 cards, the first using the full 1.bat, 2.bat etc process from a DOS boot USB stick but for the other two I just used the MegaRec -m0flash 0 imr_fw.rom (LSI 9240-8i rom) and didn't need to do anything else (no 1.bat, 2.bat etc to clean and blank the card first). This also appeared to work fine. I also ran a megacli -adpfwdefset -a0 (from memory so may not be 100% accurate) to clear the adapters current config settings. I have done this before for another customer and the card worked fine with the 9240s MegaRaid GUI on a Supermicro X9SCM-F board.

The first card (having been through the full process) booted and I was able to access the MegaRaid GUI on boot ([CTRL] + [H]) on my old MSI C2D board. The next two I did not test but the option appeared on boot.

On putting the three cards in the S1200BTL board I cannot access the MegaRaid Gui. The option is there but the system will not enter the gui. This was usually the case when ther is not enough memory available on boot and is common with desktop boards but not so much with server boards. With the three cards in the server, three devices are reported in the boot screen. Now the weird thing is that if I remove two cards (any two) then three devices are still listed in the boot screen. I have even booted on the S1200BTL board using the boot USB stick and cleared the controllers settings using the command listed above and it goes through its initialization on reboot as usual when cleared but still reports 3 devices (no drives are attached as I am still awaiting delivery of the mini-sas to mini-sas cables).

The S1200BTL board was initially booted with an i3-2100 in order to flash it to the latest firmware and then the E3-1230 v2 was swapped in (confirmation the older S1200BTL boards can support the v2 E3 Xeon processors) so it has the latest available BIOS.

The cards all have firmware from 2011 so that is the next thing I will probably try, update to the most recent release and then MegaRec to get the 9240 raid functionality back.

For those who are not aware, the reason I would like these flashed to the 9240-8i firmware and not the 9211-8i (iR) firmware is due to the report that adding new drives to the 9240-8i sets them automatically as available disks to any OS with use of the card. My understanding is that the 9211-8i (iR) firmware requires you to enter the BIOS of the card and manually set new disks.

One other note, I can access the cards MegaCli interface on boot but am unfamiliar with the command set and would rather give my customer the gui with which to add new arrays etc if they need to in the future.

Another thought is that the LSI 9240-8i has an extension for ESXi and so I may be able to set the arrays from within ESXi but as I have never played with the functionality I am not clear on what you can do with it.

Any ideas, suggestions gratefully received.

RB
 

RimBlock

Active Member
Sep 18, 2011
837
28
28
Singapore
Ok, after some more testing I have found that the SAS controllers will only be seen in slots 3 and 6 on the motherboard. According to the motherboard tech specs, slot 3 is a single PCIe x4 electrical connection (controlled by the PCH - C204), slot 4 & 5 share an x4 electrical and slot 6 has a x8.

As this is more of a motherboard issue I will start a separate post in the motherboard forum.

RB