SOLVED Error when attempting to flash 9211-8i Card

[trilepton]

I'm planning on expanding an existing system running on a Supermicro MBD-X10SLL-F-O board.
I obtained a LSI 9211-8i card and after installing it (no drives attached to it yet) I was able to see that it was in IR mode.

I discovered that FreeNAS already has the sas2flash command included so I attempted to use that with the commands from https://nguvu.org/freenas/Convert-LSI-HBA-card-to-IT-mode/ .

When executing sas2flash -o -e 6, I get the error "Erase Flash Command not Supported on this platform.", full output:

Code:

LSI Corporation SAS2 Flash Utility
Version 16.00.00.00 (2013.03.01)
Copyright (c) 2008-2013 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved

   Advanced Mode Set

   Adapter Selected is a LSI SAS: SAS2008(B2)   

   Executing Operation: Erase Flash

   Erasing Flash Region...

	   Erase Flash Command not Supported on this platform.

   Resetting Adapter...
   Reset Successful!

   Due to Exception Command not Executed. IOCStatus=0x1, IOCLogInfo=0x0
   Finished Processing Commands Successfully.
   Exiting SAS2Flash.

If I try to run the command to flash with the IT firmware sas2flash -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom it refuses to flash over IR firmware (as expected since the above command didn't work).

 

[joeschmuck]

Have you tried an internet search for your error message? Here is the result I came up with, see if this helps and if it doesn't try a search and include maybe a few more details...
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/sas2flash-easier-alternative.30789/

 

[trilepton]

Thanks for you reply. Yes, I did find that thread before posting. However, it seems to be focused on getting the EFI method working and unclear about the command already included in FreeNAS. After searching further, I found that:

One has to load the DOS version of the bootable image, and then use the DOS version of the sas2flash tool.

at the bottom of the following page: http://0x80386.blogspot.com/2016/09/lsi-sas-firmware-downgrade.html

So it looks like one must use the bootable flash drive method to flash and cannot use the sas2flash utility in FreeNAS.

 

[trilepton]

After trial and error, I was able to use the UEFI shell to successfully flash to IT mode.

Some notes in case it helps anyone else:
1) the sas2flash command included in FreeNAS will not flash from IR to IT mode (sas2flash and sas2flsh are different).
2) if your mobo has UEFI, then you should use get sas2flash.efi (download link at bottom of here) and place that with .rom and .bin file on a FAT32 flash drive. Boot from that using the Built-in EFI shell. (<- what worked for me)
3) if mobo doesn't have UEFI, you need a bootable flash drive running FreeDOS. You can use instructions from nguvu.org. You can use unetbootin instead of Rufus on linux. (<- I got "Failed to initialize PAL. Exiting program" error when trying to run sas2flsh with this method because the mobo supports UEFI).