A2SDi-4C-HLN4F - boot problems after bios upgrade

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casperghst42

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Sep 14, 2015
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Hi,

(silly me) I upgraded the bios to BIOS_A2SDICH_20220509_1.7_STDsp.zip, after which I no longer can boot. It refuses to boot from my M2 and a USB thumb drive. I have tried to reset the bios to "defaults", no change. It will see the boot menu, but screen goes blank when it is supposed to load the os.

I was wondering if not downgrading the bios would help, but I can't find the previous version, any idea where to get it from?

Cheers.
 

RolloZ170

Well-Known Member
Apr 24, 2016
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try disable secureboot.
set to UEFI only if you have a UEFI install, or use legacy/CSM if you had no UEFI install.
 

casperghst42

Member
Sep 14, 2015
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try disable secureboot.
set to UEFI only if you have a UEFI install, or use legacy/CSM if you had no UEFI install.
Tried it, and it does sadly not change anything.

1664796605805.png

This is what happens, it loads ramdisk and then stops. This happens both with M2 and USB - and it was running just fine before I upgraded the bios, which is why I asked for a copy of the previous version of the bios.
 

casperghst42

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Sep 14, 2015
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I could not find the bios on that website, and contacted SuperMicro who send me the 1.6 ... solved it.

With 1.7 I could boot a Win11 I had installed on another MVNe (same size / vendor), which points to a problem with uefi (could they be under the thumb of Microsoft).

Anyway, I'd suggest people to keep away from the latest bios update(s) from Supermicro until someone figure out how to fix this issue. And disabling secure boot and CSM did not change anything.
 

zyntax

New Member
Aug 26, 2017
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I could not find the bios on that website, and contacted SuperMicro who send me the 1.6 ... solved it.

With 1.7 I could boot a Win11 I had installed on another MVNe (same size / vendor), which points to a problem with uefi (could they be under the thumb of Microsoft).

Anyway, I'd suggest people to keep away from the latest bios update(s) from Supermicro until someone figure out how to fix this issue. And disabling secure boot and CSM did not change anything.
Thank you for this, i had the exact same issue with my A2SDI-8C-HLN4F.

RolloZ170, that file was correct, thanks.
 
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casperghst42

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Thank you for this, i had the exact same issue with my A2SDI-8C-HLN4F.

RolloZ170, that file was correct, thanks.
Good to know that there is a problem with that firmware revision, I had a case open with SM on this and the only thing I got out of that was "we do not recommend upgrading the firmware on working systems....". Take that.
 

zyntax

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Aug 26, 2017
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Good to know that there is a problem with that firmware revision, I had a case open with SM on this and the only thing I got out of that was "we do not recommend upgrading the firmware on working systems....". Take that.
Yes your post was very very appreciated. Cut the time of solving my issue a lot!
I read and chuckled about their disclaimer also before i upgraded. Thought to myself what a weird thing to say. Especially with the microcode problems from Intel lately.
I think i am done with Supermicro. Supermicro for home makes less and less sense.
Instead of IPMI i will run pi-kvm for my next server and chose regular hardware.
 

casperghst42

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I think i am done with Supermicro. Supermicro for home makes less and less sense.
Instead of IPMI i will run pi-kvm for my next server and chose regular hardware.
I've tried ASRock (E3C236D2I) and must say that yes SuperMicro boards are a bit temperamental, but I'd rather use them than ASRock where IPMI is a bit hit and miss (I ended up resetting the server by trying to access IPMI over lan from the running OS) . I've seen the pi-kvm, and yes you can save approx. 3-5w but I can't be asked to deal with even more moving parts. The A2SDI-4C-TP4F I'm running now will be switched to an X10SDV-6C-TLN4F, I need more power than 4C and 10GbE would be nice - which makes the C3000 platform really expensive.

But we wouldn't have fun if we didn't have a bit of struggle.
 

jei

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Aug 8, 2021
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Just a couple of days ago upgraded A2SDi-4C-HLN4F to v1.7 with sum_2.9.0_BSD_x86_64 from pfSense/FreeBSD cli after which reset all settings. Booting fine from NVME so far. Dodged a bullet I guess..
 

zyntax

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I've tried ASRock (E3C236D2I) and must say that yes SuperMicro boards are a bit temperamental, but I'd rather use them than ASRock where IPMI is a bit hit and miss (I ended up resetting the server by trying to access IPMI over lan from the running OS) . I've seen the pi-kvm, and yes you can save approx. 3-5w but I can't be asked to deal with even more moving parts. The A2SDI-4C-TP4F I'm running now will be switched to an X10SDV-6C-TLN4F, I need more power than 4C and 10GbE would be nice - which makes the C3000 platform really expensive.

But we wouldn't have fun if we didn't have a bit of struggle.
I agree with this aswell. I have tried ASRock "rack" hardware aswell for Ryzen. That was a horrible experience with bugs and bad functioning firmware. I had to RMA my board since the M.2 didn't work. Also the SATA-DOM didn't work either.

The pi-kvm is not about saving power for me. It's about being able to use regular pc hardware for the server and still have kvm over ip.
The lack of ECC is the only issue i see going that route. That is a compromise i am willing to take.

Struggle can be fun, but my server is intended to runt 24/7. And upgrading firmware bricking the server is not acceptable.
My next home server will be an built around an Intel i3 processor. That way i can have Plex hardware transcoding directly on my server aswell.

Just a couple of days ago upgraded A2SDi-4C-HLN4F to v1.7 with sum_2.9.0_BSD_x86_64 from pfSense/FreeBSD cli after which reset all settings. Booting fine from NVME so far. Dodged a bullet I guess..
I suspect it depends on secureboot settings. If using Legacy or UEFI boot and other settings around this.
This was Ubuntu server for me using UEFI. Neither existing install on M.2 nor the USB install of Ubuntu did work for me. Almost curious enough to test booting BSD on 1.7.
 
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casperghst42

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I suspect it depends on secureboot settings. If using Legacy or UEFI boot and other settings around this.
This was Ubuntu server for me using UEFI. Neither existing install on M.2 nor the USB install of Ubuntu did work for me. Almost curious enough to test booting BSD on 1.7.
I tried everything with the secureboot settings, and could not get it to boot - it would load the boot menu but that was it. The second I downgraded to 1.6 everything worked again. Very strange.
 

zyntax

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Aug 26, 2017
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I tried everything with the secureboot settings, and could not get it to boot - it would load the boot menu but that was it. The second I downgraded to 1.6 everything worked again. Very strange.
Yes exactly the same here. I tried every combination with, without secureboot. CSM in all combinations. Nothing could boot.
This could vary depending on what you had before the upgrade. Say for example you hade Legacy and BSD as OS. Instead of Linux and UEFI like i had and probably you aswell.
 

jei

Active Member
Aug 8, 2021
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UEFI before and after update here.

From BIOS config dump:
CSM Support=00 // *00 (Disabled), 01 (Enabled)
Boot Mode Select=01 // 00 (LEGACY), *01 (UEFI), 02 (DUAL)
 

MauriceNimma

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Nov 25, 2022
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Thank you all for this solution!
My Proxmox server stopped booting after upgrading to Linux kernel 5.15.64.
From another forum I read that BIOS 1.7 is causing this.

My question:
Is this 1.6 BIOS also suitable for my 16 core Atom C3955 motherboard A2SDI-16C-HLN4F ?
 

Matt Taggart

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Jan 23, 2023
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UEFI before and after update here.

From BIOS config dump:
CSM Support=00 // *00 (Disabled), 01 (Enabled)
Boot Mode Select=01 // 00 (LEGACY), *01 (UEFI), 02 (DUAL)
This helped! I had this same problem when upgrading to 1.7a and enabling CSM allowed me to boot in Legacy mode again. After I enabled it, I did a "save and reset" and then reentered the bios and the boot screen knew about the drives again and let me set the order.
 
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Weapon

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Oct 19, 2013
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FYI, I updated my board from 1.4 to 1.8 last night and also had to mess with the BIOS settings to get pfSense to boot. Had to re-enable CSM and then manually disable all the other boot options to get it to work. This is on a mirrored ZFS pool for boot drive if that matters.