SOLVED: MPT Bios Fault when using cross-flashed LSI 9240-8i on X10SL7-F

Joined
Jan 4, 2016
Messages
7
I'm building a new FreeNAS server and when I try to add an expansion card to increase the number of SATA connections, it won't boot.

Here's the build:

Motherboard make and model: SuperMicro MBD-X10SL7-F (including onboard LSI 2308 flashed with firmware 20.00.07.00-IT)
CPU make and model: Intel Haswell Bridge E3-1230 V3
RAM quantity: HP 24GB (3x8GB) DDR3-1600 ECC RAM
Expansion card: LSI 9240-8i cross-flashed to LSI 9211-8i (firmware 20.00.07.00-IT)
Storage:
- Quantity: 20 x 3.5" 7200rpm HDDs
- ZFS RAID configuration: 4 HDDs in RAIDZ2, 6 HDDs in RAIDZ2 and 10 HDDs in RAIDZ2
Boot drive: USB stick x 2 (RAID 1)
Computer case: Antec 1200
Hot swap enclosures: Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B x 4
PSU: Corsair AX1500i

Without the expansion card (or any HDDs connected), the system will boot without error. When I add the expansion card, I can't get beyond the Supermicro logo. Prior to the boot hanging, I get the error:

MPT BIOS Fault 01h encountered at adapter PCI(01h,00h,00h)

The bios on the motherboard is v3.3 (IPMI v3.88). With the expansion card attached, I can't even get into the Avago LSI configuration tool. During the start of the boot, the computer displays a prompt for me to press Ctrl-C to start the configuration tool, but the computer doesn't register the key presses (I've checked that the keyboard is plugged in!).

I've contacted Supermicro for help, but I've not got very far; so I was wondering whether anyone here could help / had the same experience?

Is my LSI 2940-i8 expansion card norked? What does that error mean?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

Best wishes,

Philip
 

Samuel Tai

Never underestimate your own stupidity
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Are you booting in UEFI mode? The card may be flashed with a BIOS image instead of a UEFI image, or vice versa.
 
Joined
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Messages
7
Hi Samuel, thanks for the quick response. It's taken a while for me to get back to you, because I didn't understand your message. Having done some reading about UEFI v BIOS, I then had a massive headache trying to list the SAS controllers from the EFI shell. I wanted to run
Code:
sas2flash.efi -listall
, but I couldn't create a USB on my mac that I could read from the UEFI shell.

Anyway, I finally managed to create a USB that I could read from the UEFI shell (by powering up an old Windows laptop and creating it using Rufus), and the onboard SAS2308 controller showed, but not the SAS2008 (i.e. my cross-flashed LSI 9240-8i expansion card that is now flashed to act like a LSI 9211-8i in IT mode)... Incidentally, anyone looking for a great description of how to flash/cross flash expansion cards will find one here, so thanks to @Stilez for that.

So I thought maybe the PCIe slot was broken? Thankfully, there's a second slot (albeit a PCIe 2.0 x4 in a x8 physical slot); and so I tried putting the expansion card in there. When I then booted to the UEFI shell, it showed up! This is my fallback solution, but I want to be able to take advantage of the 8 lanes that the expansion card can use, because I think the 8 x 7200rpm HDDs might be bottlenecked by the PCIe 2.0 x4 slot (not sure about this, and would appreciate your thoughts).

Before I gave up on the PCIe 3.0 x8 slot, I tried booting into FreeDOS and running
Code:
megarec.exe -adplist
, and the expansion card controller showed up! (I don't know whether this is relevant, but the onboard SAS2308 controller has never showed up when I've run that megarec command.

Next I'm going to try installing FreeNAS and connect up a load of HDDs to the SAS2008 while it's in the PCIe 3.0 x8 slot... to see whether I can access the disks and read their S.M.A.R.T information. If I can do that, then can I trust this installation? I'm concerned that there's a malfunction in here that will result in some sort of silent failure, or just an out-and-out catastrophic failure of any pool that relies on physical HDDs connected to this expansion card.
 

Samuel Tai

Never underestimate your own stupidity
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Apr 24, 2020
Messages
5,399
There should be negligible performance impact from running a x8 card in a x4 slot. If the expansion card doesn't appear in sas2flash in the x8 slot, I'd consider the x8 slot bad.
 
Joined
Jan 4, 2016
Messages
7
Oh, by the way, I should also mention that during my exploration of what would and wouldn't work, I flashed the motherboard's BIOS to the latest version (3.3) and the IPMI to the latest firmware (3.88). I reflashed the onboard SAS2308 to the latest firmware from Supermico (20.00.07.00) available here; and I reflashed the expansion card also to the latest firmware (20.00.07.00) and latest bios, by following the instructions here and here
 
Joined
Jan 4, 2016
Messages
7
There should be negligible performance impact from running a x8 card in a x4 slot. If the expansion card doesn't appear in sas2flash in the x8 slot, I'd consider the x8 slot bad.
Ah poop. I bought it second hand from America (on ebay), so I was always running this risk. The postage costs don't make it worth returning.

Just wanted to check the maths on the PCIe 2.0 x4...

PCIe 2.0 has a bandwidth of 500MB/s per channel, which should give me 2GB/s of bandwidth total on a x4 slot. Divided between 8 disks that's 250MB/s per disk, if they're all being accessed simultaneously (e.g. during a scrub of the pool). A SATA III 7200rpm HDD has a max bandwidth of 6Gb/s which is equivalent to 600MB/s (due to 10b/8b encoding, according to this), which makes it look like the PCIe x4 slot will be the bottleneck, but in reality most HDDs do sustained read/write at much less than that (e.g. the Western Digital Red drives reach 150MB/s, and the Seagate IronWolf NAS drives reach just over 160MB/s)... so in the real world, I'll be OK?
 

Spearfoot

He of the long foot
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Messages
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I'm building a new FreeNAS server and when I try to add an expansion card to increase the number of SATA connections, it won't boot.

Here's the build:

Motherboard make and model: SuperMicro MBD-X10SL7-F (including onboard LSI 2308 flashed with firmware 20.00.07.00-IT)
CPU make and model: Intel Haswell Bridge E3-1230 V3
RAM quantity: HP 24GB (3x8GB) DDR3-1600 ECC RAM
Expansion card: LSI 9240-8i cross-flashed to LSI 9211-8i (firmware 20.00.07.00-IT)
Storage:
- Quantity: 20 x 3.5" 7200rpm HDDs
- ZFS RAID configuration: 4 HDDs in RAIDZ2, 6 HDDs in RAIDZ2 and 10 HDDs in RAIDZ2
Boot drive: USB stick x 2 (RAID 1)
Computer case: Antec 1200
Hot swap enclosures: Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B x 4
PSU: Corsair AX1500i

Without the expansion card (or any HDDs connected), the system will boot without error. When I add the expansion card, I can't get beyond the Supermicro logo. Prior to the boot hanging, I get the error:

MPT BIOS Fault 01h encountered at adapter PCI(01h,00h,00h)

The bios on the motherboard is v3.3 (IPMI v3.88). With the expansion card attached, I can't even get into the Avago LSI configuration tool. During the start of the boot, the computer displays a prompt for me to press Ctrl-C to start the configuration tool, but the computer doesn't register the key presses (I've checked that the keyboard is plugged in!).

I've contacted Supermicro for help, but I've not got very far; so I was wondering whether anyone here could help / had the same experience?

Is my LSI 2940-i8 expansion card norked? What does that error mean?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

Best wishes,

Philip
I own a system based on the same motherboard. Your problems may be due to BIOS settings: there are quite a few ways to configure the PCI-E slots -- the 'Generation' in particular -- and it may be that you need to tweak these settings to fix your problem:
x10sl7-pcie-settings.jpg
 
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