Did I brick my H200?

[sactobob]

So following the helpful advice on these forums, I dumped my H700 for an H200. The controller configured in all my drives as JBOD, however FreeNas gives an alert that I need to upgrade firmware to p16.

So finding a bunch of various threads, which all seem to head in different directions. One seem straight forward, but I couldn't flash the binary using sas2flash as I got an error that the controller wasn't an IT controller. Found another thread that said to flash firmware with 6GBPSAS.FW and rom with mptsas2.rom.
However, it appears some of the commands have typos in that tutorial or I'm just going blind. Anyways, I couldn't get the firmware and rom to flash both, (due to that typo), so figured I'd do the firmware first, then the rom. BIG MISTAKE. Firmware went in and then adapter reset and kernal panicked. Now booting the Dell R610 I get an error that says:

Unable to load LSI Corporation MPT BIOS
MPT BIOS fault 05h encountered at adapter PCI (05h,00h,00h)

The controller no longer shows up once the Dell boots. Trying to boot into Dell's UEFI puts the server in an endless loop of failing to go into uefi and reboots all over again.

I''ve pulled the card and put into a non-dell system and get a similar error, but was at least able to clear flash using megarec (lsi recovery tool), but still can't finish up writing the .rom file. This non-dell system doesn't have uefi ability. But I made a freedos boot disk with mega utilities on it (from yet another google search), and using LSIs megaraid recovery tool I issued "megarec -adplist" command comes back with at least some information that seems hopeful, as it sees the card. That utility also let me clear flash, but trying to write the rom returns

Flashing image. Please wait....

Error in downloading image.
Error code = 64
Failed to flash the image. Please retry recovery

I'm so close, but fear I've created a nice $75 conversation piece of how not to flash a card.

Any further advice or help would be most appreciated.

:(

 

[jgreco]

The process for flashing the H200 is probably similar to the H310... it's a nightmarish trainwreck. Certain combinations of things will require you to go back and re-crossflash the card.

So here's the thing. I can't quite tell what you did and I don't really have the time anyways.

Moving between the IR, IT, and Dell firmware (a variation on the IR) involves a long ugly cycle.

Use "sas2flash -list" to get the SAS address for the card, and write it down.

Next, get the card in a known state. You need to clear the flash with megarec, then install a Dell sbr file with megarec, and power cycle. This sets it up to allow the Dell firmware to flash.

Install the Dell firmware with Dell's tool, and power cycle. It should look happily Dell on boot.

Now get the LSI P7 DOS utility and IT firmware. The process of flashing this allows you to "make the jump" from Dell to IT mode. It'll ask you during the process and warn you the card isn't quite right or something like that. It has to be P7 (possibly earlier would work too).

Then you flash in the P16 firmware. This can be done from FreeNAS CLI, or DOS, or EFI, or whatever. Power cycle again. Now, this process has probably killed the SAS address, so reconfigure that and verify it with "sas2flash -list".


My best *guess* is that you could jump into this process with the LSI P7 DOS flash and pick it up there.

 

[sactobob]

The process for flashing the H200 is probably similar to the H310... it's a nightmarish trainwreck. Certain combinations of things will require you to go back and re-crossflash the card.

Totally agree from my expierience. Too much 'googled info' leads to a rabbit hole, and the one I picked did have typos!

Next, get the card in a known state. You need to clear the flash with megarec, then install a Dell sbr file with megarec, and power cycle. This sets it up to allow the Dell firmware to flash.

I've searched, but what and where can I get a Dell sbr file?

If I can resuscitate this card that'll be great, if not, it'll be a $75 lesson learned.

 

[jgreco]

I glanced over this page and it looks like it has a download link.

https://techmattr.wordpress.com/2013/08/30/sas-hba-crossflashing-or-flashing-to-it-mode/

 

[sactobob]

Wanted to followup on this thread with my results. First a big THANK YOU to jgreco, that link was invaluable. I'd seen it earlier, but didn't get much into it favoring one that looked 'easier' (with the typos). Plus the download link on that page was most useful not just to create a FreeDOS disk, but all the tools put at the root level so not having to fight with shortname directories. Anyways, I'm happy to report complete success! :)

Dell's platform, at least the R610, seem to really fight you all the way with 'non-dell' hardware. Initially megerec didn't work and sas2flash saw no drives after my inadvertent flash of the card. The trick as alluded to others, was to use a different system. I happened to have a yet to be e-wasted desktop. Megarec worked and allowed me to reset the drive back to a usable state. But then sas2flash on that system gave the 'Pal initialization' error. But once the H200 was reset, putting it back in the Dell sas2flash now recognized the card. So I was able to flash to the 6GBPSAS.FW firmware and then give it a new SAS address, which I didn't have, but thanks to a screenshot of someone else's success I used that address. (Side note: why do a few 'how-tos' blank out the SAS address??? It's not like there is any chance in hell that we'll ever meet and I end up buying his card and putting it into the same machine.. lol.. ) Anyways, a reboot and now the H200 reported as the JBOD version. Next was to flash to the p16 firmware. I messed this up initially thanks to DOS shortnames and flashed to P17 instead. Oops, sas2flsh didn't allow me to go backwards. So pulled the board out and back in the desktop and used megarec to start all over. It all worked great and running iozone/dds continuously now for a few days and randomly pulling out drives (H700 crashed Freenas on an active system doing this) or cutting power and I'm quite happy with FreeNas recovery and robustness so far.

 

[jgreco]

Awesome.

 

[jgreco]

p.s. I elect you H200 guru. ;-)

 

[sactobob]

lol. I have another H200 coming Monday for a spare, I plan to recreate steps and maybe make a step-by-step how-to for what worked for me. :)

 

[sp00n]

Hi folks,
Registered here as I am starting to build my home storage server and H200 was an obvious choice (price). I do have Gen8 Microserver. I was trying to flash as this is my only system with PCI-E slot ( i have some NUCs, MP9, notebook but not a single good stylish MOBO ).

I have followed instructions from Mattr blog that was also linked here during the discussion. I tried to recover my card using some information deducted from Sactobob messages. I am stuck. If any one can help, especially Sactobob :) - please do.

megarec.exe -cleanflash 0
sas2flsh.exe -o -f 6GBPSAS.fw <- this was the moment it all went wrong. I get the Firmware image download ERROR

Now no matter if I try tu put 2118it firmware or 6GBPSAS.fw I end up:

@sactobob - how did you unbricked your card? Are you able to provide the exact steps so I can have my card in a known state?

 

[BitSprocket]

Picking up loose ends from an old thread - I just ran into the same problem but found a solution. I moved the h200 into a dell mobo and erased with megarec and redid the steps as above and voila! I don't know why it is that putting that card into an HP mobo caused the flash to fail but putting it into a dell mobo it worked as advertised. Just thought I'd post in case someone else came across this problem :)

 

[jgreco]

The H200's in particular are a bit of a pain. It helps to have a variety of old gear laying around to try in order to have a better chance of being able to flash things.