LSI 9211-8i it mode on a supermicro M11SDV-4CT-LN4F board

[mm148881]

Hi there,

I have recently been setting up a trueNAS server with a Supermicro mini-itx motherboard (M11SDV-4CT-LN4F) and would like to use a SAS HDA LSI9211-8i, which I flashed to "it mode" from a Gigabyte motherboard in an EFI shell mode. The card is well recognized by the Gigabyte motherboard and also by an ASrock motherboard. Unfortunately, I could get it to work with the Supermicro board. To be specific, when the motherboard tried to boot the card, which was correctly identified, it stalled with the message "intitializing -". After that I did the following:

i) Boot in an efi shell with a USB key containing the program sas2flash.efi, which was used to flash the card. Then use the option -show, but it stalled again.
ii) Modified the PCI-E OPROM setting in the bios to boot UEFI, previously on legacy. This was a tip I found on this site. Unfortunately, in my case that did not work. It just skipped the card initialization.
iii) I also tried a LSI Raid card 9260-i8 in Raid mode, which was fully recognized and initialized with the Oprom setting in Legacy.

I am started to think that the card that I have is just incompatible. Any other thoughts?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Max

 

[Alecmascot]

When you flashed the LSI9211-8i to IT Mode did you do the BIOS as well ?

 

[mm148881]

Hi,
Thanks for your reply. I think I did. I boot into EFI mode, then erased the bios with

sas2flash.efi -o -e 6

Then I flashed it with

sas2flsh -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom

Those files were take from the P20 revision for the 9211-i8. I didn't even know it was possible to change from ir to it mode without changing the bios.

 

[Alecmascot]

You can choose to leave the bios "blank"

 

[mm148881]

Would this change anything for my problem? In all the tutorial and forum I have searched concerning the flashing of the card to it mode, and I have searched a lot of them, the bios is systematically updated.

 

[Alecmascot]

Would this change anything for my problem?

Just another angle....

 

[Spearfoot]

Would this change anything for my problem? In all the tutorial and forum I have searched concerning the flashing of the card to it mode, and I have searched a lot of them, the bios is systematically updated.

You don't need the BIOS (mptsas2.rom) unless you plan to boot from a disk attached to the HBA. It is common practice to flash only the IT-mode firmware on HBA cards used in this way, as it speeds up booting.

 

[jgreco]

However, failing to flash it also makes debugging a good bit more difficult in many cases, because the BIOS also gives you a safe environment to inspect the attached device list and to do basic sanity checks. If your NAS were a cell phone where you had to wait for the BIOS to POST every time you unlocked it, I might understand the "speeds up booting" argument a bit better, but we generally advise people to leave their NAS up 24/7.

 

[Spearfoot]

However, failing to flash it also makes debugging a good bit more difficult in many cases, because the BIOS also gives you a safe environment to inspect the attached device list and to do basic sanity checks. If your NAS were a cell phone where you had to wait for the BIOS to POST every time you unlocked it, I might understand the "speeds up booting" argument a bit better, but we generally advise people to leave their NAS up 24/7.

Absolutely true, and I do flash the BIOS on my HBAs nowadays. I disable it in my server's BIOS for faster booting, but it's available when needed for troubleshooting. Win/win!

But the OP reports that he cannot boot his machine with the HBA BIOS installed... Removing it might solve the problem and get him past that hurdle. Or it might show that the problem isn't really the HBA BIOS.

Either way, it certainly can't hurt to try.

 

[mm148881]

I finally gave up, and I haven't tried to flas a blank bios. I think it was a problem of incompatibility, I have a recent mob from supermicro (M11SDV) and the LSI9211-8i is older. I have bought a more recent card with a LSI SAS 3008 controller in IT mode. This worked very well with no issues. Thanks for the discussion.