Re: LSI 9211 (SAS2008) BIOS problems, invalid PCI slot

[Stan Hoeppner <stan@hardwarefreak.com>]

On 9/15/2013 7:07 PM, P Orrifolius wrote:

> I have an LSI 9211-8i controller which is running the IR firmware.  My
> intention is to flash it with the IT firmware and use it for an md
> RAID array.
> 
> However I don't think it is playing nicely with my motherboard BIOS.
> 
> On first installing it, with no drives attached, the LSI BIOS runs and
> then the motherboard BIOS goes through an AHCI drive detection phase.
> After detecting the drives (2xHD 1xOptical, connected to SATA ports on
> MB) the boot hung and required a hard reset.
> 
> The LSI MPT2BIOS version is 7.29.0.0 and the controller firmware is 15.0.0.0-IR.
> The motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H (revision 1) running the F3 BIOS.
> 
> I can enter the LSI configuration utility during the controller boot
> process and I see that it has a PCI slot of 'ff' which, according to
> the utility, indicates an invalid PCI slot.

Invalid in what way?  The motherboard assigns PCI resources to expansion
boards, not the other way round.  So I'm curious as to what the board is
saying is invalid about the PCI slot configuration.

> I've updated to the latest motherboard BIOS (F9) and now the boot
> process follows the same sequence but continues after the AHCI
> detection and eventually brings up linux.  However the controller
> still reports a PCI slot of 'ff'.

Do the drives show up under the device identifier, such as in this img:
http://i.imgur.com/weKsd.jpg

> I can see it in linux but if I have a drive connected I don't see it
> in the boot configuration utility (not sure if I should) and I don't
> see it as a /dev/sd? device (not sure if this is where I should find
> it).  So I suspect it's not really working.

If you have a drive connected and powered up it should show up in the
LSI BIOS config util as above, and should also be enumerated by the LSI
boot BIOS during the POST sequence.  If the drive isn't showing up in
the controller utility then you likely have:

1.  Bad or not fully connected data or power cable(s)
2.  Bad drive
3.  Bad HBA

> Here is the output from lspci -v:
> 
> 02:00.0 Serial Attached SCSI controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic
> SAS2008 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2 [Falcon] (rev 03)
>         Subsystem: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic Device 3020
>         Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18
>         I/O ports at de00 [size=256]
>         Memory at fdcfc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
>         Memory at fdc80000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256K]
>         [virtual] Expansion ROM at fdb00000 [disabled] [size=512K]
>         Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3
>         Capabilities: [68] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
>         Capabilities: [d0] Vital Product Data
>         Capabilities: [a8] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
>         Capabilities: [c0] MSI-X: Enable+ Count=15 Masked-
>         Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
>         Capabilities: [138] Power Budgeting <?>
>         Capabilities: [150] Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV)
>         Capabilities: [190] Alternative Routing-ID Interpretation (ARI)
>         Kernel driver in use: mpt2sas
>         Kernel modules: mpt2sas

That's a good sign.  The driver loads and detects the board, and shows
no errors.

> Anybody run into this or have any advice?  Is this really a problem?
> 
> I'm reluctant to risk bricking it during a firmware flash if it truly
> is misbehaving.

The firmware rev isn't going to prevent a connected drive from being
detected and listed in the utility.  If the drive doesn't appear it's
almost certainly a data/power cabling issue.  You're using one 8087
breakout cable and one SATA connector on that cable correct?

-- 
Stan