I am sick of LSI firmware mismatch questions

[Ericloewe]

There's one particular question that really grinds my gears. As you've guessed by now, it's "What does 'Firmware version 15 does not match driver version 20 for /dev/mps0. Please flash controller to P20 IT firmware.' mean?" and its variants.

I mean, holy crap. While I get the feeling most common questions gradually become less common, this one just seems to grow more frequent. Even after I convinced the devs to reword the message to explicitly state how to solve the problem.

What's going on here? Do people have no idea whatsoever what they're doing and they're just throwing hardware together without even knowing what that hardware is?

There seem to be several levels of this:

1. Absolutely clueless about the message
2. Vague idea, but somehow still don't get that it's the firmware they have to flash
3. Doesn't know how to flash the controller and can't be bothered to actually skim the huge (/s) 26-page manual for sas2flash, readily available on LSI's website.
4. Actually has a non-trivial question

Anyway, this means I'll be writing a guide for this stuff in about a month's time, unless someone beats me to it. Maybe that will cut down on these a bit...

 

[dlavigne]

That sounds good. That section in the Guide is pretty light as it's my understanding that there's hundreds of drivers out there and that the user needs to find their particular one on the Avogo website...

 

[BigDave]

That sounds good. That section in the Guide is pretty light as it's my understanding that there's hundreds of drivers out there and that the user needs to find their particular one on the Avogo website...

Finding the legacy drivers on their (Avago Technologies) website is a huge PIA unto itself!
@Ericloewe I don't have a large amount of spare time, but if I can help, say the word...

 

[Ericloewe]

Finding the legacy drivers on their (Avago Technologies) website is a huge PIA unto itself!

Not really, if you have a general idea of what you're looking for. That's something that notably improved with the transition to the Avago website.

For instance, searching for "SAS 9207" immediately offers up the SAS 9207 product page. There, the firmware section has an archive link, which shows the old stuff (not that we need the old stuff) - unless you're looking for specific older versions of P20. I have no idea where to find P20.00.04. They only seem to have .06 and .07. The timestamps do seem messed-up though...

That sounds good. That section in the Guide is pretty light as it's my understanding that there's hundreds of drivers out there and that the user needs to find their particular one on the Avogo website...

It's not quite that bad. The firmware situation boils down to everyone flashing their cards with LSI's stock firmware, regardless of brand, whereas controllers integrated on motherboards tend to elicit more caution - people end up using Supermicro/ASRock's firmware, which seems to always end up being the exact same thing. That's something I'll look into, but I'll probably avoid explicitly recommending the use of LSI's "stock" firmware on motherboard-integrated controllers.

 

[Ericloewe]

I'll add that the sas2flash manual is surprisingly good. All options are clearly explained, fundamentals of what is being done are explained and it has an overview table for the various flags. Anyone competent enough to be running FreeNAS is also competent enough to figure things out with the help of said manual.

 

[BigDave]

I have no idea where to find P20.00.04. They only seem to have .06 and .07. The timestamps do seem messed-up though...

Like I said, "PIA"
:):):):):)

 

[INCSlayer]

I understood why a lot of them showed up when 9.10 hit because there was a stability issue at the time depending on the which version of the firmware you used. But recently there has be an uptick of them and i agree with you @Ericloewe that i cant understand why either and its annoying.

 

[Ericloewe]

I understood why a lot of them showed up when 9.10 hit because there was a stability issue at the time depending on the which version of the firmware you used. But recently there has be an uptick of them and i agree with you @Ericloewe that i cant understand why either and its annoying.

I think you mean 9.3.1, which moved from P16 to P20. Yeah, that transition naturally generated some questions and it was expected, really. But it's been almost a year...

 

[INCSlayer]

I think you mean 9.3.1, which moved from P16 to P20. Yeah, that transition naturally generated some questions and it was expected, really. But it's been almost a year...

your right it was 9.3.1