Supermicro X11SPL-F Wont post with LSI9211-8i in it (wokring fine in X10 board)

[aadje93]

Well i've got a realy strange problem;

When i put any of my LSI 9211 8i (P20 IT mode) in my new X11SPL-F board it won't even POST.

When i take it out i can boot fine to the bios, do settings in bios etc (and off couse boot usb ;) ). But when i drop it back in, i can't even enter the bios!!

When i put the LSI cards in the X10 board of my main server (this is going to be backup) they all work fine, even seeing all 24 disks in the SC846 that my main server is running.

The backup server hardware config:
Supermicro X11SPL-F board, run by a Intel Xeon Silver 4112 (2.6G quad).
4x 16GB QVL memory (Samsung M393A2K40BB2-CTD). And lastly the LSI 9211-8i

Strange things happen when the LSI is in the board;
As said, i can't even get to the bios. It hangs after the first "splash screen" on a black screen with white marker (after the 3 low and 1 high beeps which i recognize from all my supermicro boards) Normaly this is the point you get the screen which confirms that you go to bios "entering setup". But this doesn't show, instead a black screen with a white flashing - The black screen of death :(

Also in IPMI i can't even get a single sensor reading when the 9211 8i is in the system, which is realy weird.

Now i've updated the bios to the most recent version (2.19.1268) And the IPMI software (1.46, allready on it but decided to reflash it to be 100% sure the newest was on it).

I don't know if it some weird setting in the bios thats causing the problem for the LSI card, or that the board's pcie slots are just plain "broken". I tryed all slots with all lsi 9211 8i i had (i dont have any other spare pcie cards i can test as my main desktop system's gpu is watercooled and no more addon network cards available to me to try it out as all onboard is intel now as far as i know/no problems with them).

Anybody that can point me into the right direction a little? I've read the X10/X11 faq, tryed to reset the IPMI settings when it wasn't recognising it, then the system seems to reboot and does the same thing again so that didn't help me out.

 

[silverback]

Well i've got a realy strange problem;

When i put any of my LSI 9211 8i (P20 IT mode) in my new X11SPL-F board it won't even POST.

When i take it out i can boot fine to the bios, do settings in bios etc (and off couse boot usb ;) ). But when i drop it back in, i can't even enter the bios!!

When i put the LSI cards in the X10 board of my main server (this is going to be backup) they all work fine, even seeing all 24 disks in the SC846 that my main server is running.

The backup server hardware config:
Supermicro X11SPL-F board, run by a Intel Xeon Silver 4112 (2.6G quad).
4x 16GB QVL memory (Samsung M393A2K40BB2-CTD). And lastly the LSI 9211-8i

Strange things happen when the LSI is in the board;
As said, i can't even get to the bios. It hangs after the first "splash screen" on a black screen with white marker (after the 3 low and 1 high beeps which i recognize from all my supermicro boards) Normaly this is the point you get the screen which confirms that you go to bios "entering setup". But this doesn't show, instead a black screen with a white flashing - The black screen of death :(

Also in IPMI i can't even get a single sensor reading when the 9211 8i is in the system, which is realy weird.

Now i've updated the bios to the most recent version (2.19.1268) And the IPMI software (1.46, allready on it but decided to reflash it to be 100% sure the newest was on it).

I don't know if it some weird setting in the bios thats causing the problem for the LSI card, or that the board's pcie slots are just plain "broken". I tryed all slots with all lsi 9211 8i i had (i don't have any other spare pcie cards i can test as my main desktop system's gpu is watercooled and no more addon network cards available to me to try it out as all onboard is intel now as far as i know/no problems with them).

Anybody that can point me into the right direction a little? I've read the X10/X11 faq, tryed to reset the IPMI settings when it wasn't recognising it, then the system seems to reboot and does the same thing again so that didn't help me out.

The only thing that comes to mind is to check if there is a bios update for your main board.

 

[aadje93]

Forgot to add,

checked the controllers off couse in a different system. And bios/IPMI is updated to most recent versions. Also tryed it with a very old 4gbp/s Fibrechannel card which worked great. Put a LSI9211-8i next to it and the problem starts again, with or without the qlogic card so 99,99% sure the LSI's are causing the problem in the supermicro system.

the LSI's all work fine in my own desktop system (which i expected).

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

Well i've got a realy strange problem;

When i put any of my LSI 9211 8i (P20 IT mode) in my new X11SPL-F board it won't even POST.

Are there any settings in the BIOS on the PCIe card slot you are using? I can't say what they might be, but perhaps you experiment with that.

 

[Borja Marcos]

If you don't need to boot of the SAS HBA you can simply delete the HBA controller BIOS. The driver will still work perfectly.

I had to to this in order to use some LSI2008 HBAs in some brain-dead IBM servers.

 

[aadje93]

Are there any settings in the BIOS on the PCIe card slot you are using? I can't say what they might be, but perhaps you experiment with that.

You are a life saver! I changed the PCIE-slot boot option from Legacy to EFI and strangely (totally against my intutition as EFI is newer then the LSI9211-8i release date) it does work now, combined with a advanced setting i got from the supermicro support team (They didn't suggest changing the PCIE options, they were like "if this settings doesn't help then the card is no longer being supported").

Now i am seeing 24 4TB disks in my new freenas, so Solnet Array test is going to start to verify everything is working good (not a louse solution for something that shouldn't work indeed) so my pools are not at risk. But this realy solved almost 20hours of finding out the problem, even refitting the whole CPU/memory to verify everything was correct (1 pin not installed correct could cause the problem allready, funny thing i found out to as IPMI thought it was a 4108 cpu (1.6g octacore) instead of a 4112 :).

If you don't need to boot of the SAS HBA you can simply delete the HBA controller BIOS. The driver will still work perfectly.

I had to to this in order to use some LSI2008 HBAs in some brain-dead IBM servers.

How would i do this? I realy don't need any interface on these cards, they just need to be a bridge between motherboard and my sas expander :).

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

You are a life saver! I changed the PCIE-slot boot option from Legacy to EFI and strangely (totally against my intutition as EFI is newer then the LSI9211-8i release date) it does work now, combined with a advanced setting i got from the supermicro support team

You are welcome. Glad to hear that helped.

How would i do this?

Referring to disabling the boot BIOS on the card. Go into setup in the 9207 during the boot process. There is an option in the card setup to disable the BIOS.

 

[aadje93]

Thanks, what would that help me, a bit faster boot times perhaps?

Do note i use 9211-8i not 9207 ;)

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

Thanks, what would that help me, a bit faster boot times perhaps?

I doubt it. It just wouldn't advertise itself to the system BIOS as a possible boot device.

Do note i use 9211-8i not 9207 ;)

Oops. I was thinking of my own setup. I imagine it is pretty much the same though.

 

[Borja Marcos]

The problem was not only advertising itself as a boot device. It seems that the BIOS initialization itself made the IBM firmware crash.

So I deleted the flash BIOS with sas2flash -e 5

I did it from FreeDOS, I think the FreeBSD version doesn't support erasing flash pages.

Just in case, right after doing this I updated the firmware with sas2flash -o -f
and I didn't update the BIOS. So, BIOSless card.

But beware, make sure there is a firmware present or you will brick the card.

 

[finish.06]

You are a life saver! I changed the PCIE-slot boot option from Legacy to EFI and strangely (totally against my intutition as EFI is newer then the LSI9211-8i release date) it does work now, combined with a advanced setting i got from the supermicro support team (They didn't suggest changing the PCIE options, they were like "if this settings doesn't help then the card is no longer being supported").

Now i am seeing 24 4TB disks in my new freenas, so Solnet Array test is going to start to verify everything is working good (not a louse solution for something that shouldn't work indeed) so my pools are not at risk. But this realy solved almost 20hours of finding out the problem, even refitting the whole CPU/memory to verify everything was correct (1 pin not installed correct could cause the problem allready, funny thing i found out to as IPMI thought it was a 4108 cpu (1.6g octacore) instead of a 4112 :).



How would i do this? I realy don't need any interface on these cards, they just need to be a bridge between motherboard and my sas expander :).

What was the advance setting recommended by the SuperMicro team? I am experiencing the exact same issue you originally posted.

Thanks!

 

[aadje93]

Supermicro suggested a setting which didnt work out for me;

Advanced\Boot Feature\INT19 Trap Response\set to “Postponed”

What did work was setting PCIE slots to pcie3 or something like that (not legacy) I don't remeber the exact screen in bios, but i think also in advanced>boot feature.

 

[Akindia]

The setting that worked for me, similar to what aadje93 said was in BIOS - Setting the PCIe slot setting specific for the slot I was using to UEFI mode rather than the default "legacy" mode... Thanks to all who helped!

 

[chad3814]

You are a life saver! I changed the PCIE-slot boot option from Legacy to EFI and strangely (totally against my intutition as EFI is newer then the LSI9211-8i release date) it does work now, combined with a advanced setting i got from the supermicro support team (They didn't suggest changing the PCIE options, they were like "if this settings doesn't help then the card is no longer being supported").

OMG you guys, this fixed it for me too, five years later!!

 

[Ericloewe]

P20 firmware for the SAS2 cards (and certainly some older versions) is packaged with an EFI extension ROM, in addition to the legacy BIOS OpROM. In addition, if you are not booting from the card, consider disabling or removing both option ROMs.