My X10SL7-F, the LSI chip, and upgrading to 9.3

[dtemp]

I have an almost 2 year old build of FreeNAS running on a Supermicro X10SL7-F with a built in LSI chip. I haven't upgraded the mobo firmware or LSI firmware since the first day. The IMPI says the mobo firmware is either v1.23 or v1.1a, unsure; I know the LSI chip is on IT firmware v16.

I also haven't upgraded FreeNAS; I'm still on 9.2.1.8. When I looked into upgrading to 9.3 six months ago, it scared me off. My research then seemed to imply that 9.3 wouldn't support v17 of the IT firmware, and I couldn't find a good resource on if I needed to do a mobo firmware upgrade to support newer versions of IT firmware. I'd rather not update either to be honest, as Supermicro themselves suggests not upgrading either if things are working, which they are.

Does anyone have more information on the way forward for me here? Do you know if I need to update LSI and/or mobo firmwares to support the latest stable 9.3? (I know I can get IT firmware here.) Any other tips on the upgrade for my setup?

 

[dtemp]

Doing some more reading, it looks like upgrading to LSI IT v20 is prudent. If you agree with that, any tips to upgrade it properly? Should I do it before or after the FreeNAS upgrade? Theres a way to do it in the EFI that seems better than booting into DOS?

 

[jgreco]

Yes, you should upgrade the firmware to 20.00.04.00 (note the subrevision, apparently there's a problematic version floating around). For maximum paranoia, you could disconnect the drives before doing it, but it's probably fine regardless. The paranoid route is disconnect drives, upgrade firmware, upgrade FreeNAS, reattach drives.

The sas2flash built into FreeNAS should be sufficient to the task, or you can use a boot disk (EFI or DOS).

 

[hugovsky]

You can take a look here:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...e-on-a-supermicro-x10sl7-f-motherboard.38884/

 

[pjc]

Yes, you should upgrade the firmware to 20.00.04.00 (note the subrevision, apparently there's a problematic version floating around). For maximum paranoia, you could disconnect the drives before doing it, but it's probably fine regardless. The paranoid route is disconnect drives, upgrade firmware, upgrade FreeNAS, reattach drives.

Is there any indication that the paranoia is necessary?

It does feel a little weird to flash the firmware on a controller with live drives, but it would sure be a lot easier to update FreeNAS then use its sas2flash to update the firmware than to power down, pull drives, boot to DOS, etc.

I'm assuming it's best to update FreeNAS before the controller?

 

[BigDave]

but it would sure be a lot easier to update FreeNAS then use its sas2flash to update the firmware than to power down, pull drives, boot to DOS, etc.

I would not not recommend taking the easy way, unless you have proper backups of your data/files.

Of you don't have proper backups, it's best to be paranoid and disconnect drives, upgrade firmware,
upgrade FreeNAS, reattach drives.

BTW the post you responded to was/is over two years old, just sayin'

 

[pjc]

the post you responded to was/is over two years old, just sayin'

So's my install of FreeNAS ...

Is it better to upgrade the firmware first or FreeNAS? (The system data store uses drives on the controller, in case that makes a difference.)

 

[Stux]

So's my install of FreeNAS ...

Is it better to upgrade the firmware first or FreeNAS? (The system data store uses drives on the controller, in case that makes a difference.)

In which case the latest version of the LSI software is 20.0.7.0 now

 

[Jailer]

Is it better to upgrade the firmware first or FreeNAS?

FreeNAS. Running a newer firmware on an older driver is not recommended.

 

[BigDave]

The system data store uses drives on the controller, in case that makes a difference.

If the drives are disconnected, it will not matter. If you choose to leave your pool attached, update FreeNAS first.

 

[Ericloewe]

Is there any indication that the paranoia is necessary?

Yes. No filesystem is going to react well when its devices start acting all weird because their controller is being flashed. That is why the UEFI flasher is the safer option for controllers that are already in use.