strazto / lsi-sas92xx-m1015-flash-firmware

The full bootable filesystem needed to reset & flash an LSI SAS92xx M1015 SAS controller card (eg, to IT mode), bootable in both DOS & UEFI

lsi-sas92xx-m1015-flash-firmware

The full bootable filesystem needed to reset & flash an LSI SAS92xx M1015 SAS controller card (eg, to IT mode), bootable in both DOS & UEFI

Reminder - Find the card's SAS address printed on a sticker on the card.

You're going to need this later, so whenever you get a chance to pull the card out, find a sticker with a 16 digit hex code and take a photo. It probably looks something like: 500605Bxxxxxxx

How to use

In order to reliably flash one of these cards, there a few different tools we need to use, and a few different bootable environments needed to run these tools.

I've set up this project to make it so the steps to get the environments you need are as straightforward as possible.

• You will just need to copy the same filesystem to both:
  • A DOS compatible USB
  • A UEFI compatible USB
  • the only difference is the way you've formatted the USB.

Tools / Environments

Tools:

• megarec utility
  • We need this to wipe the previous firmware and vendor information from the card.
  • (this only works in a DOS shell)
• sas2flash.efi
  • We need this to flash the new firmware and SAS address onto the card
  • (this probably only works in an EFI shell)
• Rufus or a similar tool, for making bootable USBs.

Environments:

• DOS shell
  • We need this to run megarec
• EFI shell
  • We need this to run sas2flash.efi

Images

• sbrempty.bin
  • We write this to a device using megarec to help clear existing information from it
  • We use megarec to write this to the device.
• 2118it.bin :
  • The target firmware image we're going to flash to the device.
  • This firmware allows direct disk passthrough to the host machine.
    • An alternative target firmware is 2118ir.bin, which also supports disk passthrough, but with more hardware RAID features.
  • We use sas2flash.efi to flash this to the device.

Physical peripherals

• You need a USB stick to boot from.

Steps

A: Wipe the existing firmware (Using DOS)

Set up the USB:

1. Use rufus to make a DOS USB
   • For "Boot Selection" choose "FreeDos"
   • There's no need to use a disk or ISO image
   • Choose MBR for the partition scheme.
2. Copy everything from the root of this project to the root of the USB.

Wipe the card:

1. Plug the USB and boot from it
2. Wipe the card: You can either type:

   megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
   megarec -cleanflash 0
   

   Or try running the batch script TOITMD1.BAT (does the same thing)

Shut down the system.

B: Flash the new firmware (Using UEFI)

1. Reboot the machine in UEFI mode. You may need to switch your boot mode into 'UEFI' or if the option of 'Boot from UEFI device' (or file) is available in your boot menu, select that. If you need to specify a file, use the supplied efi/boot/bootx64.efi shell.
2. Navigate to the USB filesystem
   • The shell should give you a list of filesytems on the device on boot, but you can also use map to list them.
     • You can use PageUp / PageDown keys to scroll
   • The actual filesystem ID may vary (It's usually fs0, but for me it was fs1), but it seems to appear first on the list.
   • To change filesystems

     # The colon at the end is important
     fs1:

   • Confirm you're in the correct place by listing the contents:

     dir
     

     You should be able to see the files from this project
3. Flash the card You can type it out by hand:

   • Flash the image

     sas2flash -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom
     

     Re-add the card's address

     sas2flsh -o -sasadd 500605Bxxxxxxx
     

     Substituting your card's actual address for 500605Bxxxxxxx Or you can try the batch script TOITMD2.BAT

If all goes well, you should get some output confirming the flash operation and address write.

Shutdown the system, unplug the USB, and boot normally.

Acknowledgements

When putting this together, for the most part I didn't plan for it to be reproducible, so I've done my best to retrace my steps and the provinence of the difference components.

• I chose to license this project as GPLv3, based on the assumption that at least one of the binaries in this stack is GPL licensed, and will infect this distribution.
  • I haven't bothered checking most licenses too closely, I'll address any license disputes if they come up but I'd be pretty surprised
• I got the original fileset for flashing to P20 from Spearfoot on TrueNas
  • I found this via Philip and Dakota Schneider's blog
• The final combination of binaries I needed came from this stack overflow comment
  • The [./efi/boot/bootx64.efi] is from tianocore/edk2,
    • the specific version I am using plays well with the other binary utils, particularly ( sas2flash.efi)
    • tianocore/edk2 is BSD licensed, which should
  • sas2flash.efi is from broadcom specifically version P20 for UEFI
• GeekGoneOld's comment on truenas was a solid comprehensive reference explaining the process.
• The very first walkthrough I used was a 10 year old guide from servethehome which also gives a solid reference for what IT and IR modes are and why you might want them.