How to cross flash IBM M1015 to IT-mode?

[rmflint]

I am trying to cross flash the IBM Serveraid M1015 to IT mode, following this tutorial (IBM ServeRAID M1015 Part 4: Cross flashing to a LSI9211-8i in IT or IR mode): (http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-serveraid-m1015-part-4/)

The problem I am having is accessing the 'flasher' files downloaded from the link provided on how-to page which I copied to the bootable USB drive.

I created a bootable DOS USB drive using FreeDOS (from Linux machine) and copied the downloaded ' flasher' files to this drive. However, when I boot from the USB drive, I only see the default files in the FreeDOS created root directory (a:\). The tutorial states 'Self Extract the files somewhere, then place onto the USB stick' which I did when I created the bootable USB drive.

Is there something I am missing when creating a bootable DOS USB drive and accessing the 'flasher' files? Should the 'flasher' files be copied to a separate drive then change directory (in DOS) to this drive to run them?

Any help pertaining to creating the USB boot drive from anyone who have successfully cross-flashed their controller would be appreciated!

 

[ian351c]

I started with greco's thread here.

I'm also documenting my own build here. I ended up using UEFI to do the flashing, which was a lot easier than dealing with a boot disk. Here's the post for UEFI flashing.

 

[Ericloewe]

Where did you put the folder? Maybe it ended up somewhere besides the root level.

When I needed to flash my BIOS, I just made a separate folder at the root of the drive, then navigated to it.

As for flashing, in a nutshell, you probably have to erase the EEPROM from BIOS and then flash from the EFI shell. Future flashes shouldn't need the erase part.

 

[BigDave]

It's been a while since I did mine but I remember using individual files without folder structure
of any kind. Eric's last statement above was true for me anyway, I had to boot to DOS to erase, then boot to the EFI shell to flash.

 

[rmflint]

I started with greco's thread here.

I'm also documenting my own build here. I ended up using UEFI to do the flashing, which was a lot easier than dealing with a boot disk. Here's the post for UEFI flashing.

Thanks Ian. I will give the UEFI method you mentioned a try. After reading through all the threads I think I have the appropriate packages to proceed. These were downloaded from LSI support. Could you please verify if the following are correct before I proceed?

1) 9211_8i_Package_P16_IR_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows
2) Installer_P16_for_UEFI

Thanks again to everyone for the help. I will post me results back to this thread once I give it a shot.
Cheers

 

[ian351c]

Those look right. Good luck!

 

[rmflint]

My original IBM M1015 was apparently DOA. I just received a new one which appears to be working. I see it during startup and it appears to already be set in JBOD mode. Unfortunately, the info scrolls by so fast I could not gather any more details on its current setup. I tried UEFI approach to flash to IT-mode. However, once I boot into the UEFI shell, sas2flash does not recognize the controller. Even using just the 'sas2flash.efi -list' command still generates an error from sas2flash 'Error no LSI sas adapter ...'. I ran the >PCI command from the shell and the RAID controller is recognized. At this point I'm not sure of either what I am missing or if I am running the wrong sas2flash.efi program.

Per BigDave's post, can anyone confirm the correct method for booting to DOS-shell and erasing, then boot into UEFI-shell to flash?

This is what I assume the method would be:

Boot to DOS:
megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
megarec -cleanflash 0

Then Boot to UEFI shell:
sas2flash.efi -o -f 2118it.bin

Can anyone please verify this approach?

 

[ian351c]

I would start here. It all worked fine for me, so I can't offer much more winsome than that, sorry.