IBM ServeRAID M1015 Part 4: Cross flashing to a LSI9211-8i in IT or IR mode

Your link to the files is broken

http://files.laptopvideo2go.com/hdd/m1015.exe

gives a 404 not found error.

Cheers John for pointing that out.
Got a wee .htaccess bug going on there I’ve discovered.

The link above now takes you to my website where I’ve made a holding page with link to the Firmware files.
May as well get some benefit for hosting the files

Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Have updated the 7zip package with new P12 Firmware and BIOS.
Also updated to the latest version, sas2flsh (DOS) and sas2flash (win x64)
And included the txt files with commands and also sas2ircu app

Great post for ZFS users! Bookmarked it.

A question, is there a program that tells me the identity number on the card? It is a pain to open up the computer just to get the identity number…

Hi,

Using the M1015->9211-IT section,

first two steps completed ok.

Rebooted back to usb stick.

first sas2flsh command resulted in:

ERROR: Failed to initialise PAL. Exiting Program.

Any ideas?

( If I’ve bricked the card, no problems, you gave a very fair warning, but it’d be nice to recover if possible )

( To Michael: the command megacli -adpallinfo -page -a0 will get you the number, it’s about 2 or 3 pages in )

Further to the last post, I have been able to restore the card to the beginning state following the ‘back to LSI9240′ section.

Please note that some of the file names in the above instructions differ from those in the downloaded archives, eg emptysbr.bin sbrempty.bin.

There’s also a 0 missing in the final megarec command in the ‘back to LSI9240′ section.

Ken – let if you happen to know what edits need to be made let me know and I can get that updated.

I had to amend your instructions for cross flashing to 9211-8i IR mode.

megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
megarec -cleanflash 0

sas2flsh -o -f 2118ir.bin -b mptsas2.rom
sas2flsh -o -sasadd 500605B0xxxxxxxx (x= numbers for SAS address)

with a shutdown/reboot after the -cleanflash (for some reason it took that line out of my comment above)

Thanks! I’m currently building a FreeNAS box and after buying 3TB drives I realized that my SASUC8I controllers have a 2TB limit. The controllers BTW that I flashed to LSI IT firmware using instructions from this site!

I already have drives and backplanes that are SASII/SATAIII 6.0 GBps and even though I don’t expect much of a performance boost I desperately need to access the whole 3TB that I purchased. Especially since prices have risen so suddenly. Thanks, global economy!

I’ll be back here when I’m ready to flash and I’ll post if I wind up with any good info or tips. Thanks so much to everyone here I wouldn’t be as far along without the great info here.

Patrick,

As Rob noted, emptysbr.bin needs to be changed to sbrempty.bin wherever it occurs.

m1015sbr.bin needs to be changed to sbrm1015.bin

Megarec -m0flash 0061_lsi.rom needs a change to:

Megarec -m0flash 0 0061_lsi.rom

Regards

A couple more edits needed:

The “sasadd” parameter to sas2flsh needs changing to “-sasadd” wherever it appears.

how soon before you publish the M5015 instructions?
looking forward to it.

Sorry guys been out of town and no interweb where I was.

For some reason I cannot edit the post above any more.
I have how ever fixed the small typo’s on the download page

Patrick if you could please copy and past the text and replace the above.

I hope to be home more now, quite over being on the road, so I can finally get onto the M5015 write up, and make less booboo’s with notes I do on the desktop then write up on laptop.
The M5015 is proving quite a curse with the BBU.
I’m going to have pass judgement with it not working 100%

If I don’t want to flash the boot bios back in, is the proper command:

sas2flsh -o -f 2118it.bin

Took a chance and succeeded in changing the M1015 from “factory’ to IT Mode..

Pieter, a BIG thank you for taking the time to compile and document this.

Ken, thank you for your posts here also. Yea, I’m probably one of a few that reads through to the end

To you both my flashing just now went off without much of a hitch. Again, thanks.

OK, some notes.

Pieter, the four M1015′s I just received were stickered 2011-10-12 and my SAS address on the cards are formatted as 0-0nnl-nnln, 9 digits in length. As 9 digits, I received a “”SAS address must be 16 numbers” error at using the command “sas2flsh -o -sasadd 500605b0. “Your’ 8 digits(500605b0) plus my nine equaled 17 digits Undeterred, and while still starring at the error on screen I typed it out dropping one of the 0′s between your posted command and my beginning SAS address and then it continued on to success.

Can I suggest you revisit the trailing 0 as is currently posted. Using as posted made my SAS address flash 17 digits and generated the above error.

Also, for the record what I asked above of not flashing the boot bios back in, the cmd is:

sas2flsh -o -f 2118it.bin

————————-

What I used to get these cards working here:

DOS bootable USB pen drive with the LSI9211 P12 files provided here.

First checked that USB stick was bootable
Rebooted again back onto the USB stick

megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
megarec -cleanflash 0

sas2flsh -o -f 2118it.bin
sas2flsh -o -sasadd 500605bxxxxxxxxx (x= “MY’ 9 digits on sticker for SAS address)

Took a chance and succeeded in changing the M1015 from “factory’ to IT Mode w/o the boot bios being re-flashed back in.

Pieter, a BIG thank you for taking the time to compile and document this.

To the other posters here, thank you for your continuing addendum posts here also.

OK, some notes I observed here.

Pieter, the four M1015′s I just received were stickered 2011-10-12 and my SAS address on the cards are formatted as 0-0nnl-nnln, 9 digits in length. As 9 digits, I received a “”SAS address must be 16 numbers” error at using the command “sas2flsh -o -sasadd 500605b0. “Your’ 8 digits(500605b0) plus my nine equaled 17 digits Undeterred, and while still starring at the error on screen I typed it out dropping one of the 0′s between your posted command and my beginning SAS address and then it continued on to success.

Can I suggest you revisit the trailing 0 as is currently posted. Using as posted made my SAS address flash 17 digits and generated the above error.

Also, for the record what I asked above of not flashing the boot bios back in, the cmd is:

sas2flsh -o -f 2118it.bin

Now I don’t see anything of the cards bios during boot. Flies right to Win 7.

————————-

What I used to get these cards working here:

Began with bare cards in slot w/o any drives connected.

DOS bootable USB pen drive with the LSI9211 P12 files provided here.

First checked that USB stick was bootable
Reboot again back onto the USB stick

megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
megarec -cleanflash 0

sas2flsh -o -f 2118it.bin
sas2flsh -o -sasadd 500605bxxxxxxxxx (x= “MY’ 9 digits on sticker for SAS address)

No probs Rick, good to have a place with all the flash info at hand.

Added a command line for flashing with no OptionROM

Changed the ’0′ to a ‘x’ in the sasadd command line, the cards I’ve had access to all had a ’0′ on the 9th digit.

It actually doesn’t matter what address you give the card as long as it’s unique in your system
The label on the card is just to make it unique in the world.

Yes removing the OptionROM will not display anything and happily boot to any OS
The drives will just be passed through, and think of the extra time you can spend with your loved ones not waiting those aprox 15 extra seconds at every boot

Just followed your guide for converting the M1015 to a LSI9211-IR mode and it worked perfectly. Thank you so much for posting all this information.

Pieter,

I’ve been running mine in IT mode for a while, with a mixture of SSDs & HDDs (8 drives total). What benefits will I gain if I went with IR mode? Thanks.

Have updated the article above

CK13, going to IR mode will allow you to use RAID 0, 1 or 10
If you don’t need/want RAID then stick with IT mode.

Thanks alot for this post, it helped me tremendously.

For those interested in mass update I’ve scripted the install (msdos oldies)

First BRAVO for this article !!

Second usual disclamer….
Third get choice.com and reboot.com (google it please) and put them on your usbkey

the erasing :
_______________________________________________________
@ECHO off
cls
rem LSI9211-IT
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO -= Erasing flash of M1015 ibm Mode =-
ECHO -= To prepare X-Flashing =-
ECHO -= Thanx to Pieter Servethehome =-
ECHO -= Ctrl-c to abort =-
ECHO.
ECHO.
Pause
megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
megarec -cleanflash 0
ECHO -= Erase of M1015 ibm Mode finished REBOOTING =-
Pause
reboot
_______________________________________________________

the flash IT-IR on selection

_______________________________________________________
@ECHO off
cls
REM Flashing LSI-IT : LSI9211-IT (JBOD style) of M1015 ibm Mode.
REM Echo sas2flsh -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom (sas2flsh -o -f 2118it.bin if OptionROM is not needed)
REM Echo sas2flsh -o -sasadd 500605bxxxxxxxxx (x= numbers for SAS address)
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO * verify SAS adress (After 500605b0-%1-) *
ECHO.
ECHO -500605b0%1-
ECHO -11111111111111111-
ECHO.
ECHO * there must be 17 digits !! *
ECHO * If you only have “1″ SAS card in your system*
ECHO * this number isn’t important *
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO ctrl-c to abort
pause
cls
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO * Press”1″: IT mode no option rom save boot time(LSI9211-I*T* mode)
ECHO.
ECHO * Press”2″: IT mode with option rom (LSI9211-I*T* mode)
ECHO.
ECHO * Press”3″: IR mode with option rom(with raid..)(LSI9211-I*R* mode)
ECHO.
CHOICE /N /C:123 PICK A NUMBER (1, 2, or 3)%2
IF ERRORLEVEL ==3 GOTO THREE
IF ERRORLEVEL ==2 GOTO TWO
IF ERRORLEVEL ==1 GOTO ONE
GOTO END

:THREE
ECHO YOU HAVE PRESSED : IR mode with option rom(with raid..)(LSI9211-I*R* mode)
ECHO ctrl-c to abort
pause
sas2flsh -o -f 2118ir.bin -b mptsas2.rom
sas2flsh -o sasadd 500605b0%1

GOTO END

:TWO
ECHO YOU HAVE PRESSED IT mode with option rom (LSI9211-I*T* mode)
ECHO ctrl-c to abort
pause
sas2flsh -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom
sas2flsh -o sasadd 500605b0%1
GOTO END

:ONE
ECHO YOU HAVE PRESSED IT mode no option rom save boot time(LSI9211-I*T* mode)
ECHO ctrl-c to abort
pause
sas2flsh -o -f 2118it.bin
sas2flsh -o sasadd 500605b0%1
:END

ECHO Flashing LSI-Ix of M1015 ibm Mode finished
ECHO REBOOTING
Pause
reboot
_______________________________________________________

Once again BRAVO for this job…

I urge to crossflash my m5014 !!

Hi,

Thanks, good write up. I’m using one of these cards in IT mode to present more disks to windows server 2008.

Has anyone managed to get disk spin down working in windows?
I know the linux world has used hdparm to do this, but the windows binary i have found state disks on the IBM card arn’t supported.

I *think* I have had some success with hdscan.exe but I wondered if anyone else has a way to make these disks spin down when not used for a period of time in windows?

Thanks
Tony

For anyone getting this error:

“ERROR: Failed to initialise PAL. Exiting Program.”

The UEFI bios is the issue. You will need to boot into the UEFI shell and run the SAS2FLASH.EFI executable instead.

More info can be found here:
http://brycv.com/blog/2012/flashing-it-firmware-to-lsi-sas9211-8i/

Pieter, would it be possible to include this in your 7zip file? Also, firmware version P13 is out.

Thanks for the great tutorial and everyone’s comments!

I am using sdparm to get the disks to spin down. this works on windows too. Make a batchfile which will be executed on startup which contains the disk spindown timeout value. the only problem here is, windows will not know that and there may be high access times on those disks.

Awesome! bought a few of them for 75$ on eBay!

I do have 2 questions:

1- once flashed, will I be able to use future released firmware directly from LSI? (or do I have to wait/check until the author has the firmware modded)

2- If I flash to IT mode without the OptionROM then would all the hard drive connected to the controller kick in at the same time (no staggered spinup?)

Thanks!

Try the forums @ http://forums.servethehome.com/showthread.php?433-IBM-M1015-Experiences or another thread. Lots of people to answer all of you questions.

when doing it with efi shell, you have to flash it step by step or you geting an error on bios upload.
make
megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
megarec -cleanflash 0

sas2flash -o -f 2118ir.bin
sas2flash -b mptsas2.rom
sas2flsh -o -sasadd 500605b0xxxxxxxx (x= numbers for SAS address)

I purchased a m1015 off of ebay, I do not know if it has been previously flashed, does any one know how I can read the Firmware and get a report of what is currently installed on the device?

Joseph: Try the forums. Lots of info there and it is monitored often.

need the UEFI version of sas2flash for my X9SCM-F-O

sas2flash.efi is no longer in “Installer_P12_for_UEFI.zip”
it was forcibly removed out of the zip file by LSI’s own Microsoft Forefront Protection installation:
—————-
FILE QUARANTINED

Microsoft Forefront Protection for SharePoint removed a file since it was found to be infected.
File name: “Installer_P12_for_UEFI.zip->sas2flash.efi”
Malware name: “Suspicious!SA”
—————-

anyone have a copy of sas2flash.efi they can share?

Finally found sas2flash.efi by digging through all of LSI’s downloads.

As of current time, the file still exists in:

Installer_P13_for_UEFI.zip
Installer_P10_for_UEFI.zip

via this search: http://www.lsi.com/Search/Pages/downloads.aspx?k=sas2flash.efi

Installers numbered P8, P9, P11, and P12 have the text file with the quarantine message in place of the .efi file. No good!

Anyway, in case the sas2flash.efi file is removed again in the near future, I’ve made a copy available here: http://www.mediafire.com/?z66is5rrdui6rc3

Hi, does this guide works for M1115? I’m bought a M1015 but the seller is OOS on M1015 and send me an M1015 instead, am I screwed?

sorry, I mean “send me a M1115 instead”

“sas2flsh -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom (sas2flsh -o -f 2118it.bin if OptionROM is not needed)”

I dont understand this. What does it mean? What is OptionROM? If I want IT mode, should I enter the (…) too? Can you please explain?

“Dont flash BIOS, so startup is faster”, should I omit the whole line above to achieve this?

So it will look like:

“Convert LSI9240(IBM M1015) to a LSI9211-IT mode
Type in the following exactly:
megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
megarec -cleanflash 0

sas2flsh -o -sasadd 500605bxxxxxxxxx (x= numbers for SAS address)

Done!”

And the line above is omitted? Is this correctly understood?

Thanks fior the script akelku I used it and it worked a treat. There is one error a dash missing before sasadd here
{quote}
sas2flsh -o sasadd 500605b0%1
:END

ECHO Flashing LSI-Ix of M1015 ibm Mode finished
ECHO REBOOTING
Pause
reboot
{quote}

Just wanted to say that P14 is out since september 18

great blog post and help .. will try your suggestion when I get home, since I dont want to try it over the management console of my NAS ^^

After flashing from the standard M1015 firmware to the IR firmware, will existing (pre-IR) volumes (raid-1, mirror) be still usable?

Since the P14 firmware is out, what would be the process of flashing that, instead of the firmware bundled in your zip file?

I was looking at a ServerRAID m1115 which is suppose to be the new version of the ServerRAID m1015.. will this crossflashing work on the new card?

gav

Patrick, do you know if you need the OptionROM if you are using expander backplanes with this controller?

I’ve flashed successfully with P14 IT and will test over the next few days.
Just replace sas2flsh, 2118it.bin, and mptsas2.rom with the newer versions.

major problem with these in IBM x3630M3 – the eufi boot hangs unless the card’s bios is disabled.
Tried P12 & P14 firmware for the same issue.

If you say that one needs to follow the instructions exactly, please fix the addresses in the instructions, they are bit ambiguos.
Compare your instructions for flashing IT and IR:
sas2flsh -o -sasadd 500605bxxxxxxxxx (x= numbers for SAS address)
sas2flsh -o -sasadd 500605b0xxxxxxxx (x= numbers for SAS address)
Other on has 9 x’s, other 8. Obviously the address has to be 16 digits and the 9th digit is most likely always 0, but one has to realize that actually you HAVE to go against the instructions to be succesfull.

Anyways thanks for the great writeup, I’m just about to flash with IT firmware

To get the SAS address of the card without looking at the label:

megacli -AdpAllInfo -aAll

I crossflashed sucessfully my IBM M1015 to LSI IT mode, but I have a problem that is messing my system:
– disks are not detected in the right order on linux. And each time I reboot, the disks are usually detected in a diferent order. I want to use mdadm to create a raid6 array and this can be very bad, because if one disk fails, I will never know what disk it is. Is there anything that can be done to have linux detect the disks in the right order ?

thanks!!!

It worked. I did the crossflash on an older Asus P5Q motherboard, and the process took no more than 2 mins. Happy days ahead!

Great article! I just bought this controller on ebay and replaced my old PCI-X LSI SAS3080X to free up a slot and get a faster, more flexible adapter. Flashed to a LSI 9211 (IR mode) according to your instructions and it works great. Thanks!

For people with disk order problem under linux; mount your disks with UUID (or label) and problem solved! The blkid command shows UUID, label and linux device. Smartctl will output the serial number of the drive. So in short, UUID ties it to the linux device and through smartctl you get the disk serial number.

A hardware controller should also be able to detect failed disks. I’m not sure about this case, though. A simple way to try to detect healthy drives would be to execute find / -type f -exec cat {} \; >> /dev/null and check which one lights up.

I am stuck in step 1 when trying to flash to IT mode. After I type in step 1 I get two lines about DOS/32a protected run time version etc supernar syatems and then blinking cursor. Nothing else and cannot type anything after that. Please help.

Hi,

Tried to flash my M1015 (which was sold to me as a M1115 ?) to LSI 9211 IT mode.
Got the PAL error message when using a ASUS Crosshair formula V motherboard.
When attempting to flash it on my old gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD3P, it worked like a charm.
Now I read about IR mode and that it still allows straighttrough, so back from IT to IR mode. Hope it works.

Thanks a lot for your excellent instuctions, comments and scripts.

I just successfully flashed my M1015 with LSI IT. It worked like a charm. I did noticed some comments about issues trying to do it on Intel DQ77MK, So I did it on a Asus P7H55D-M EVO. Thanks a lot for the article.

Hi everyone.

I need to flash a Dell Perc H310 to IT mode to be able to use in ESXi and pass the drives directly to unRAID. I have 2 quesitons…

1. Does the H310 use the same exact LSI chipset as the M1015?
2. The card does not have a green sticker with the SAS address. Is there another way to find it…maybe in ESXi (or a putty command)?

TIA!

John

So, I pulled the heatsink off of the LSI chip on the card and this is what I see…

LSI
500002730
LSISAS2008
1221
EAP21C82
Taiwan

My question…is the SAS Address a combination of 500002730 + EAP21C82 = 500002730EAP21C82?

John

Is it still required to flash LSI 9211-4i HBA to IT mode in order to disk clone from the old Vertex 2 SSD on the Intel X58 Express (Dell T3500) to SATA III SSD (JBOD) connected to the 9211-4i with the IR firmware. Is it true that the cloning will only work if I would 2+ SSDs in RAID 0?

Does anyone know if it’s possible to force an M1015, in any firmware mode, to do write-back rather than write-through? Write speeds are killing me and data integrity does not matter *AT ALL* for the application I’m working with.

Thanks!

Hi,
Thanks for this great post, and I see youve also posted on UEFI installs too. My question is with regards to Server2012 UEFI install on a GPT partitioned virtual disk of the M1015.

I crossflashed the card to IR mode yesterday using this procedure but updated the files in the download with the latest bin and rom from the LSI site. All went well. I hit CTRL+C and created my RAID10 virtual disk across my 4x 2TB Seagate drives, however when trying to install Server 2012 I still see unavailable unpartitioned space as if its defaulting to MBR.

I saw this ‘unavailable unpartioned space’ problem before when trying to install 2008R2 server to the RAID10 virtual disk I created befre I crossflashed. I decided to try 2012. I also changed the DH67CL Mobo I was using (which has a UEFI option in the BIOS, but doesnt appear to do anything) today a for an Asus P8Z77-V which definitely has UEFI bios as I shelled out to it to update the M1015, however I still see this same problem during the OS installation. I guess its down to the Boot settings in the mobo BIOS. Please can you let me know how you have yours set up to get this all working together?

TIA