9.3.1 Update with alert Firmware version 16 does not match driver version 20 for /dev/mps0

[raidflex]

The simple way..... (As always a good backup is always a good thing. Just in case)
My scenario: SM X10SL-7 and an IBM M1015 working properly on firmware 16, updated to 9.3.1 and got firmware mismatch.

SSH to the box

make a temporary dir and go into it

Get firmware for IBM M1015
wget http://www.cstone.net/~dk/p20.zip
unzip p20.zip

Get firmware for 2308 from super micro
wget ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/driver/SAS/LSI/2308/Firmware/IT/PH20-IT.zip
unzip PH20-IT.zip

Run freebsd sas2flash -listall and note the index number for the 2008 (IBM) vs the 2308 (Supermicro) controller then with this info:
sas2flash -c # -f 2118it.bin where # is the index number for your SAS2008 (IBM) controller
sas2flash -c # -f UEFI/2308IT20.ROM where # is the index of your SAS2308 (Supermicro) controller (adjust the path if you unzipped to a different directory)

Do a sas2flash -listall to confirm both controllers are on rev 20 firmware, then reboot

Now both controllers are on Rev 20, pools are loaded ok, no errors. No sweat, no paranoia. (Having a backup helped making me feel brave though)

The SM firmware is indeed slightly older (20.00.02.00) than the LSI (20.00.04.00). I will upgrade when SM comes up with an upgrade or otherwise if either I get problem or somebody else convincingly reports firmware related trouble. I am confident SM would not have left a bugged firmware in the general download for this board and risk irate users calling after losing their data

Cheers

This worked great for me with the same motherboard and M1015. Painless and fast.

Well, I checked around a bit more and apparently the only thing that Avago now certifies is "Driver version = Firmware version". There is no "official line" about whether vF < vD or vD > vF is better for any consistent value of better (though everyone agrees that VD = bad).

I also asked @jpaetzel, who has debugged many misbehaving systems in the field, and he also said that "we have demonstrated cases that mps 16 + p20 firmware is bad" and "we have demonstrated cases that mps20 + p16 firmware is bad" so I guess all that anyone can agree on is that not matching them exactly and precisely is bad, has always been bad, and always will be bad. There is no good. We live in a cruel, uncaring world where the air is progressively more polluted, the oceans are full of plastic waste products and dying fish, and our natural resources are being depleted even more quickly than the population is increasing. We are all destined to die choking and alone, packed in a tiny and ever-contracting cage like rats in some cruel science experiment with no point other than to inflict pain and suffering.

Hope this helps!

 

[i3luefire]

this worked for me except i did

Code:

sudo sas2flash -fwall 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom

since i only have one card in my system.
thanks for this solution!

Sure.

• First, download the appropriate firmware for your LSI SAS board; this was the appropriate page for mine. Download the Phase 20 (P20) firmware bundle (for mine, it was "9211_8i_Package_P20_IR_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows", under the "Firmware" grouping). That it says "MSDOS_Windows" is irrelevant; they include the firmware updater tools for those, but FreeNAS has the "sas2flash" tool in the path when you log in.
• Next, unzip the ZIP file that you download. Upload (via whatever protocol, I sent it to my user account homedir via scp) the following file(s):
  • Firmware/HBA_9211_8i_IT/2118it.bin - This is the actual adapter ROM image. You will 100% need this.
    
  • sasbios_rel/mptsas2.rom - This is the adapter BIOS. If you have the BIOS already in your card's ROM, go ahead and update it too; if you manually erased the ROM and don't have it on the card, you don't need it.
• (Optional, but recommended) If you think any of the services running on your FreeNAS box might be used out from under you while you're doing this, stop them through the web interface. Use the Services page and (if you're using any plugins) the Plugins and/or Jails pages to stop them.
• SSH into your FreeNAS box - either directly as root, or use 'sudo' or 'su' to become root (depending on how you've set things up). (You should probably be able to run this via the "Shell" feature of the web interface, though via the IPMI console would probably be a better choice if you're not familiar with SSH.)
• 'cd' into the directory where you uploaded the files I mentioned above.
• Run 'sas2flash -listall' to list your adapters (this is from after I updated the firmware):
  
  Code:

  # sas2flash -listall
  LSI Corporation SAS2 Flash Utility
  Version 16.00.00.00 (2013.03.01) 
  Copyright (c) 2008-2013 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved 
  
      Adapter Selected is a LSI SAS: SAS2008(B2)  
  
  Num   Ctlr            FW Ver        NVDATA        x86-BIOS         PCI Addr
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  
  0  SAS2008(B2)     20.00.04.00    14.01.00.08    07.39.00.00     00:01:00:00
  
      Finished Processing Commands Successfully.
      Exiting SAS2Flash.

• If you haven't lost your nerve by now, run 'sas2flash -c 0 -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom' to update the firmware and BIOS ROM (if you don't want/need the BIOS ROM, just run 'sas2flash -c 0 -f 2118it.bin'. Borrowing example from another poster, because I didn't save mine.)
  
  Code:

  # sas2flash -fwall 2118it.bin
  LSI Corporation SAS2 Flash Utility
  Version 16.00.00.00 (2013.03.01)
  Copyright (c) 2008-2013 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved
  
  Ignoring All other commands except for output flags
  
  Attempting to flash firmware to LSI SAS SAS2008(B2) :
  
  Executing Operation: Flash Firmware Image
  
  Firmware Image has a Valid Checksum.
  Firmware Version 20.00.04.00
  Firmware Image compatible with Controller.
  
  Valid NVDATA Image found.
  NVDATA Version 14.01.00.00
  Checking for a compatible NVData image...
  
  NVDATA Device ID and Chip Revision match verified.
  NVDATA Versions Compatible.
  Valid Initialization Image verified.
  Valid BootLoader Image verified.
  
  Beginning Firmware Download...
  Firmware Download Successful.
  
  Verifying Download...
  
  Firmware Flash Successful.
  
  Resetting Adapter...
  Adapter Successfully Reset.
  
  Finished Processing Commands Successfully.
  Exiting SAS2Flash.

  
  
• This will take a couple minutes; most of the time for mine was sitting at "Resetting Adapter..." Once the firmware update is done, and your adapter has reset itself, you'll see stuff like this in 'dmesg' (and on the console):
  
  Code:

  mps0: Reinitializing controller,
  mps0: Warning: io_cmds_active is out of sync - resynching to 0
  [...]
  mps0: Firmware: 20.00.04.00, Driver: 20.00.00.00-fbsd
  mps0: IOCCapabilities: 1285c<ScsiTaskFull,DiagTrace,SnapBuf,EEDP,TransRetry,EventReplay,HostDisc>
  mps0: mps_reinit finished sc 0xfffffe0000a9c000 post 4 free 3
  mps0: Unfreezing SIM queue
  mps0: SAS Address for SATA device = d2694759f4bbd189
  mps0: SAS Address from SATA device = d2694759f4bbd189
  mps0: SAS Address for SATA device = d2675e5bf4e1c88b
  mps0: SAS Address from SATA device = d2675e5bf4e1c88b
  mps0: SAS Address for SATA device = d27d5e4df2c9d785
  mps0: SAS Address from SATA device = d27d5e4df2c9d785
  mps0: SAS Address for SATA device = d2675a4bf2e1d195
  mps0: SAS Address from SATA device = d2675a4bf2e1d195
  mps0: SAS Address for SATA device = d2675a4bf2e0c080
  mps0: SAS Address from SATA device = d2675a4bf2e0c080
  mps0: SAS Address for SATA device = d27d5b53d9bacc93
  mps0: SAS Address from SATA device = d27d5b53d9bacc93

• Take a breath, you're all done. Restart those services you stopped, if you stopped any above.

That's pretty much it.

 

[DaveFL]

I find it odd that P20 is the recommended firmware. I've read numerous reports of issues with it.

 

[AndreStarTrek]

I find it odd that P20 is the recommended firmware. I've read numerous reports of issues with it.

Could you post the sources? I like to read them.

 

[Darren Myers]

I find it odd that P20 is the recommended firmware. I've read numerous reports of issues with it.

It wasnt recommended until this recent 9.3.1 update, but i havent seen any issues with it thus far. Only seen issues when people had FreeNAS 9.3 with the P16 driver and P20 firmware; and even then it was just a matter of crossflashing it to the proper version

 

[DaveFL]

Could you post the sources? I like to read them.

Do a quick google search, they seem to be everywhere. I believe there have been a few reversions of P20 because of all the bugs.

 

[Mr_N]

So i have a couple Supermicro AOC-S2308L-L8E cards which came with P19 or 20 firmware and I was going to install them now that freenas has upgraded from P16.

But there seems to be alot of people having panic attacks over the fact that the supermicro version of P20 is not same as the LSI version and so I'm just wondering if there's anything to be hyperventilating over or can i go ahead and get them installed and flashed to P20 using supermicro's version if they came with P19 while i have some spare time?

 

[DaveFL]

It would be nice if someone from DEV could answer why it is safe to use P20 when there are many reports suggesting that it is not. What has changed to make it safe?

 

[Ericloewe]

It would be nice if someone from DEV could answer why it is safe to use P20 when there are many reports suggesting that it is not. What has changed to make it safe?

P20 was tested for a long time in the nightlies and iX is in contact with LSI. There are no known serious issues.

If you know of something, please share.

 

[DaveFL]

P20 was tested for a long time in the nightlies and iX is in contact with LSI. There are no known serious issues.

If you know of something, please share.

Which revision 20.0 or 20.2?

 

[Peter Jakab]

Which revision 20.0 or 20.2?

You mean 20.00.02 or 20.00.04?

 

[Pheran]

I'm still extremely unclear if it's safe to use the SuperMicro 20.00.02 firmware with FreeNAS 9.3.1. Until this issue resolves itself in some way, I'm staying on 9.3 and v16.

 

[Mr_N]

It would have been helpful if in the release notes of 9.3.1 they'd said look we've updated the driver version to P20 and there has been extensive testing of these firmware versions (lsi/supermicro etc) and you can go ahead and flash away, and we may have ended up with a thread with a few posts in it rather than 10 pages of everyone trying to work out whats going on...

 

[DaveFL]

You mean 20.00.02 or 20.00.04?

Right. Or 20.00.0. If there has been extensive testing done I'm curious on which version of P20. Supermicro uses 20.00.2.

 

[BigDave]

The original phase 20 (20.00.00.00) was released around September 2014 and had it's problems.
The next phase (20.00.02.00) was released around February 2015 and finally
the last phase (20.00.04.00) has been out since around May 2015.

FreeNAS has been testing with P20 in the 9.3 nightlies "for months", according to
iXsystems CTO @jkh when he made the forum announcement of the 9.3.1 Stable release <<<found here.

Your current firmware version, should dictated by your manufacturer's recommendations, i.e.
Supermicro, ASRock Rack, etc. (hardware that's under warranty)

Personally, I updated my firmware (on a IBM M1015) with the LSI/Avago released version
20.00.04.00 :)
This card's warranty has long since expired, but still uses the tried and true LSI SAS2008 8i chip set
making the decision a no brainer...

 

[Mr_N]

Flashed my M1115 to the LSI 20.00.04.00 FW today and tucked it away as a backup for the future.
I then installed both the SM HBA cards I got recently and flashed them using the SM 20.00.02.00 FW.

All seems to have gone well, Upgraded to FreeNAS 9.3.1 and my pool lives :)

I put both SM cards in at same time and then realized I couldn't work out which controller number was which when using the -sasadd command to program the SAS addresses to each card so ended up removing one once I'd flashed both.

Might be a silly question but I'm assuming the SAS Addresses need to be programmed to the correct card?
And what purpose do these addresses serve? Are they the MAC address equivalent of storage cards?

 

[Ericloewe]

Are they the MAC address equivalent of storage cards?

Something like that, yes.

 

[KevinM]

I didn't have a problem. I got the .bin file from the Windows distribution above and used the FreeBSD version of sas2flash. FTPed both into /mnt/tank , dropped to shell and ran:

Code:

sas2flash -fwall firmwareimagename

Appears to have worked fine on both Supermicro X9DRD motherboards with LSI 9207-8i HBAs

I haven't been able to find where I saved the serial number of my m1015, so I had resigned myself to pulling the card and following the howto I used last time on servethehome.com. But instead I happened across this post. The entire process took less than a minute. Kudos!

Code:

[root@freenas] ~/flash# ./sas2flash -fwall 2118it.bin

LSI Corporation SAS2 Flash Utility
Version 20.00.00.00 (2014.09.18)
Copyright (c) 2008-2014 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved

    Ignoring All other commands except for output flags

    Attempting to flash firmware to LSI SAS SAS2008(B2)   :

    Executing Operation: Flash Firmware Image

        Firmware Image has a Valid Checksum.
        Firmware Version 20.00.04.00
        Firmware Image compatible with Controller.

        Valid NVDATA Image found.
        NVDATA Version 14.01.00.00
        Checking for a compatible NVData image...

        NVDATA Device ID and Chip Revision match verified.
        NVDATA Versions Compatible.
        Valid Initialization Image verified.
        Valid BootLoader Image verified.

        Beginning Firmware Download...
        Firmware Download Successful.

        Verifying Download...

        Firmware Flash Successful.

        Resetting Adapter...
        Adapter Successfully Reset.

    Finished Processing Commands Successfully.
    Exiting SAS2Flash.

 

[phenx]

Does anyone have experience with a Dell H200 running on LSI IT Mode P20? Any problems to be expected with that card and P20?

 

[Ericloewe]

Does anyone have experience with a Dell H200 running on LSI IT Mode P20? Any problems to be expected with that card and P20?

If you get it crossflashed, it should be identical to an LSI SAS 9211.