LSI 9270-8i IT mode

[outlander]

Hey vanfawx, great work!

I have bought an rx300 with an RAID Ctrl SAS 6G 1GB (D3116) with MR. I need to crossflash because I want to use ZFS without any raid controller.

As far as I can tell this card is based on LSI 2208 and I tried several sas2flsh P5/P13/P14/P15/P20 (dos/efi) without success => No adapter ...

Is there anything I am doing wrong?

 

[BLinux]

Hey vanfawx, great work!

I have bought an rx300 with an RAID Ctrl SAS 6G 1GB (D3116) with MR. I need to crossflash because I want to use ZFS without any raid controller.

As far as I can tell this card is based on LSI 2208 and I tried several sas2flsh P5/P13/P14/P15/P20 (dos/efi) without success => No adapter ...

Is there anything I am doing wrong?

did you erase the flash first? if you don't remove the MegaRAID firmware first, it won't go into MPT mode and sas2flsh will not see it.

 

[outlander]

I have saved my sbr and spd first with megarec.
Then I have written an sbrempty.bin with megarec and
megarec -cleanflash 0

After a reboot sas2flsh did not see anything.

Then I have written my sbr and sdp back ... and all was like before.

Do you think MegaRAID wasn't erased then?

 

[Devinirv]

@vanfawx have you ever had success with the 9260 8i, I've followed the guide on here and flashed my 9271 8i to 9207 8i with great success. Had to track down the correct sas2flash utility to do this in uefi as I have no older bios hardware. I haven't attempted my 9260 yet but it would be nice to see what progress you may have made with this, I might try at some point in a few days if i can find my utilities usb.
I've also experienced issue where my 9271 wouldn't initialize with bios installed using p20 on my Cisco server when connected to the back-plane, so I removed the bios and system boots but wont recognize the lsi card when connected to the back-plane. So now I'm using it with an external adapter to a breakout box to store drives in rather than the back-plane of the Cisco and I'm using an older 9240 in the Cisco connected to the back-plane which works fine. Its strange... wondering if the back-plane needs firmware update but haven't been able to find any info on the Cisco back-plane.

 

[vanfawx]

@Devinirv - Hey, I tried with a LSI 9260-8i and once I wiped away the firmware, I was not able to see the controller with sas2flsh. Unlike the 2208 chipset that's used for both the RAID and HBA designs, the 9260 used the 2108 chip and the 9211 HBA's used the 2008 chip. Doesn't mean this isn't possible, but I wasn't able to make it work.

Do you need to boot from the HBA? If not, just disable the ROM BIOS and skip that part.

Also, just to comment on your 9240, I'm pretty sure that's a RAM-less adapter based on the 2008 chip that you can cross flash to an IT mode firmware.

Anyhow, hope this info helps!

 

[Devinirv]

@vanfawx the lsi 9240 8i is cross flashed already. I was just hoping to use the 9271 but it wont work with my backplane.

 

[destrekor]

@vanfawx

I think I have the same 9270-8i retail card you used, and I too got the screaming speaker result.

Did you physically cut out the speaker? Notice any issues that came from that? I'd rather not physically modify the card if at all possible.

I see there are commands to disable the alarm itself (which as an HBA used in a vSphere passthrough setup, the alarm would be useless anyway, right?), but they appear to rely on preboot megacli.exe and I can't get any version I've come across to see the card from a boot disk. With the EFI sas2flash like in the guide it shows up, and of course it appears as a 2308 chip during boot. But that doesn't expose

https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...u-megarec-sas2flash-and-megaoem-commands.457/

 

[vanfawx]

@destrekor - Yes I physically cut out the speaker. Those megarec commands won't work, because a LSI HBA doesn't have a speaker. The only option I found was to physically remove the speaker. This didn't cause any issues to the functionality of this card as a HBA.

 

[destrekor]

@destrekor - Yes I physically cut out the speaker. Those megarec commands won't work, because a LSI HBA doesn't have a speaker. The only option I found was to physically remove the speaker. This didn't cause any issues to the functionality of this card as a HBA.

Ah alright thanks. Yeah after looking more into it, it seems part of the sign of successfully converting the card to an HBA is that megacli, megarec, etc won't even recognize the card in the first place.

This is just the first time I had one with a speaker, at least one that got triggered to scream non-stop. Come to to think of it, I think my other cards have speakers but the crossflash for those didn't trigger the speaker. Those were H310 or similar models I think. After I got the cards turned into HBAs I had no reason to even see if I could get any megacli to recognize them.

 

[vanfawx]

Yup, you'll run into this every time turning a 9270-8i into a 9207-8i HBA. You didn't run into this with the H310 because it's a HBA in IR mode, not a full fat MegaRAID controller.

 

[Devinirv]

I to had the same issue with the screaming speaker. My fix was a pair of channel locks and twisted it off. Seemed to fix the issue . I wasnt to concerned about ruining the card as I have a stack of them from retired servers from work. My lsi card is also a true lsi card, not a add in board 3rd party lsi card like the Dell, hp, and IBM variants.
Cheers

 

[Devinirv]

So I'd like to revive this discussion again. I have 9 dell perc h710p pci 3.0 lsi cards which are lsi 2208. The exact same as the 9271 8i. I am going to attempt to crossflash thses as I did with my 9271 however I'm a little concerned about the srb and spd files as I think the dell servers I have look for these during boot. If the correct srb and spd are not present the server fails to boot. Can anyone confirm this before I decide to brick this non retail lsi card. Or if anyone has any info on whether I may need to edit the srb and spd files...Heard this part from a little bird but I cannot confirm as it might be a little beyond my hardware skills. Tomorrow i will attempt and see my results.

 

[BLinux]

So I'd like to revive this discussion again. I have 9 dell perc h710p pci 3.0 lsi cards which are lsi 2208. The exact same as the 9271 8i. I am going to attempt to crossflash thses as I did with my 9271 however I'm a little concerned about the srb and spd files as I think the dell servers I have look for these during boot. If the correct srb and spd are not present the server fails to boot. Can anyone confirm this before I decide to brick this non retail lsi card. Or if anyone has any info on whether I may need to edit the srb and spd files...Heard this part from a little bird but I cannot confirm as it might be a little beyond my hardware skills. Tomorrow i will attempt and see my results.

From what I know, Dell checks the PCI ids in the SBR *only* in the integrated slot or the mini monolithic slots, not in the regular PCIe slots; or otherwise a non-branded LSI card would not work along with many other components which I think would drive customers away.

I think you only need to worry about the SBR's PCI ids if the card is being installed in the integrated slot. And even that, it doesn't seem to care about the firmware, so if you wanted to, you can run LSI firmware with a SBR modified with the Dell subsystem PCI ids, but not run Dell firmware.

BTW, have you confirmed that your H710P cards run at PCIe 3.0 speeds? I've found that the Dell firmware cripples the card to run only at PCIe 2.0 speeds *even* if the chipset can do PCIe 3.0 (SAS2208 Rev D1).

 

[Devinirv]

thanks for the response, right now my supermicro motherboard is recognizing the card as pci 3.0 and the dell card is also running the latest firmware from dell. The card is still under warranty and covered by 24/7 onsite. This card came out of a government system pulled out because it was running windows 7 pro and well some IT departments don't realize you can just pop in a win10 usb and upgrade rather than spending another 6k on a system.
so im working on flashing it now for some reason im getting a slight error trying to backup the sasaddress(not written on sticker) and this may be due to non compatible megacli version. once all said and done I will run this card without bios as i have no need for it. Im also doing this on a newer motherboard am not quite familiar with(consumer) vs my x10slm-+f so im hoping this doesnt give me grief...fingers crossed.

 

[Devinirv]

Ok, so I tried flashing the perc h710p pcie3.0 sas2208 d1 card tonight. Ran the typical megarec commands after I found one that would recognize the card. Backed up sbr and spd then proceeded to write over sbr then clearflash and reboot. Everything was good and successful but then this is where things got weird. So I booted into shell and ran sas2flash and it detected the card but no firmware and wanted me to exit or choose a file. Had a similar issue before flashing an onboard 2008 to it on my inventec board. The issue I found there is it didnt clear the megaraid off the card. So I tried again in dos. Same procedure I've done 20 times before. Boot back to shell and same issue. Odd part is I then exit sas2flash then proceed to write firmware sas2flash -o -f 9207-8.bin and it verified and proceeds then errors out at the end. Gave it a minute the sas2flash -list and it hangs for 1 minute then says no lsi detected. Wait 30 seconds after having an oh shit moment... then it detects it again. But still as sas2208. So rinse/repeat and tried again from the beginning to clearflash etc. Same issue. Now I've tried sas2flash v19, v20, v15, v5 with no luck. One thing I've noted is the nvdata is version 14.0.1.0.0.0 where my other retail card is 14.0.1.0.0.6
I'm calling it a night but my next step is to try firmware v15 of the 9207-8.bin and see if that will flash. But I suspect megarec - cleanflash isnt clearing everything off the card as far as megaraid bios....

Hopefully someone has some thoughts and prayers for me lol...

 

[Devinirv]

From what I know, Dell checks the PCI ids in the SBR *only* in the integrated slot or the mini monolithic slots, not in the regular PCIe slots; or otherwise a non-branded LSI card would not work along with many other components which I think would drive customers away.

I think you only need to worry about the SBR's PCI ids if the card is being installed in the integrated slot. And even that, it doesn't seem to care about the firmware, so if you wanted to, you can run LSI firmware with a SBR modified with the Dell subsystem PCI ids, but not run Dell firmware.

BTW, have you confirmed that your H710P cards run at PCIe 3.0 speeds? I've found that the Dell firmware cripples the card to run only at PCIe 2.0 speeds *even* if the chipset can do PCIe 3.0 (SAS2208 Rev D1).

so i seem to now be second guessing the pci version. if I use p20 sas2flash it sees it as pci3.0 however i tried using an older version version 5 of sas2flash and it sees it as pcie 2.0 and also doesnt give me a rev of the sas2208 chip. it is a d2 as i have confirmed directly on die. I atempted using a 9205-8e.bin and it failed. Im convinced the card is not having the megaraid bios removed while in bios using megarec. Any thoughts on a better way to wipe the megaraid bios and clear the card?

 

[BLinux]

so i seem to now be second guessing the pci version. if I use p20 sas2flash it sees it as pci3.0 however i tried using an older version version 5 of sas2flash and it sees it as pcie 2.0 and also doesnt give me a rev of the sas2208 chip. it is a d2 as i have confirmed directly on die. I atempted using a 9205-8e.bin and it failed. Im convinced the card is not having the megaraid bios removed while in bios using megarec. Any thoughts on a better way to wipe the megaraid bios and clear the card?

how are you checking the PCIe 2.0 vs 3.0? I use lspci in Linux...

 

[Devinirv]

how are you checking the PCIe 2.0 vs 3.0? I use lspci in Linux...

I'm using megacli. Is this not going to be accurate. So I've though about this a bit more and I feel this issue may have to do with an incorrect empty sbr file. I've scowered and found similar issues with the "writing current Mfg Page 2 settings to Nvram. FAILED TO VALIDATE MFG PAGE 2" this may be due to vendor Id in the sbr in the flash. I'm not sure if I'm going in the right direction. I could keep trial and error with every version of sas2flash.efi I can find. Might try and track down an old enough system that doesn't have efi bios and compare results. If anyone has any more ideas it would be appreciated. Or I could donate a card to someone who would be willing to give this a try. I'm hoping to do a complete write up of this once I'm done. These cards are soon going to available more in mass.

Thanks

 

[BLinux]

I'm using megacli. Is this not going to be accurate. So I've though about this a bit more and I feel this issue may have to do with an incorrect empty sbr file. I've scowered and found similar issues with the "writing current Mfg Page 2 settings to Nvram. FAILED TO VALIDATE MFG PAGE 2" this may be due to vendor Id in the sbr in the flash. I'm not sure if I'm going in the right direction. I could keep trial and error with every version of sas2flash.efi I can find. Might try and track down an old enough system that doesn't have efi bios and compare results. If anyone has any more ideas it would be appreciated. Or I could donate a card to someone who would be willing to give this a try. I'm hoping to do a complete write up of this once I'm done. These cards are soon going to available more in mass.

Thanks

you could be right.

So, this is what I know:

1) this sbrempty.bin file that is floating around is nothing but 256bytes of 0x00 in it. nothing sophisticated here.

2) SAS2208 Rev B0 chipset uses 256byte SBR - so applying the above is probably good enough to erase it. The EEPROM chip that holds the SBR is actually 8K worth of storage, but only the first 256bytes here are used. Keep in mind, rev B0 is a PCIe 2.0 only chipset. (early revision)

3) SAS2208 Rev D1 chipset uses 512byte SBR - so applying the above SBR file probably only erases the 1st copy (there is a backup copy in the SBR). doing this probably leaves some junk behind starting from 0x100 offset. This rev D1 chipset is the PCIe 3.0 chipset; although with Dell firmware in the systems I've seen, it seems to advertise only PCIe 2.0.

 

[Devinirv]

you could be right.

So, this is what I know:

1) this sbrempty.bin file that is floating around is nothing but 256bytes of 0x00 in it. nothing sophisticated here.

2) SAS2208 Rev B0 chipset uses 256byte SBR - so applying the above is probably good enough to erase it. The EEPROM chip that holds the SBR is actually 8K worth of storage, but only the first 256bytes here are used. Keep in mind, rev B0 is a PCIe 2.0 only chipset. (early revision)

3) SAS2208 Rev D1 chipset uses 512byte SBR - so applying the above SBR file probably only erases the 1st copy (there is a backup copy in the SBR). doing this probably leaves some junk behind starting from 0x100 offset. This rev D1 chipset is the PCIe 3.0 chipset; although with Dell firmware in the systems I've seen, it seems to advertise only PCIe 2.0.

Thanks for the response.
Where does one acquire the 512byte sbr file, I would love to apply this overwrite and see what my results are. When you are referring to backup copy, if I had said 512byte sbr file it would erase this backup. Or is the backup something that I need to somehow not trigger when the pci bus reinitializes the card?

Thank you so much for some of the hints. I feel like I'm making progress with this. I've probably invested almost 80 hours in the last 3 weeks with research and testing and learning from my mistakes. Im bound and determined to do this. however im trying to take care in doing this and after work all day and family stuff im tired and ive learned the hard way... do not screw with stuff tired and hungry mistakes happen.