Downgrade LSI 9207 to P19 firmware

After numerous problems encountered with the P20 firmware on this card model, here are the steps I followed to flash in P19 Version.

Since, no more problems :)

The model of the card is a LSI 9207-8i (SAS2308 controler) with IT FW:

lspci | grep LSI
01:00.0 Serial Attached SCSI controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic SAS2308 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2 (rev 05)

I use :

Virtual Floppy Drive : http://sourceforge.net/projects/vfd/
Freedos : http://www.fdos.org/bootdisks/autogen/FDOEM.144.gz
Installer P20 for UEFI : http://www.avagotech.com/products/server-storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9207-8i#downloads
9207_8i_Package_P19_IR_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows : http://www.avagotech.com/products/server-storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9207-8i#downloads

With VFD I create an new 2.88 MB floppy that contain :

KERNEL.SYS     from Freedos
sys.com        from Freedos
sas2flash.efi  from Installer P20 for UEFI
mptsas2.rom    from 9207_8i_Package_P19_IR_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows
9207-8.bin     from 9207_8i_Package_P19_IR_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows (IT firmware in my case)

Downgrade LSI

Virtual Storage plugin on Supermicro to connect Drive B :

Downgrade LSI

Reboot server and press F11 on startup to access boot menu and start with Built-in EFI Shell.

Downgrade LSI

Go into floppy drive (fs0:, or fs1:, fs2:, ...) and verify content :

Downgrade LSI

Before starting to flash, verify your card with sas2flash -list. If you have more than one controler you can specify the controler with -c controler_id for the next commands.

Next, you will need to erase all the content of the card (to avoid error like "Cannot downgrade NVDATA version...")

sas2flash -o -e 6

Downgrade LSI

Flash with the new firmware and bios :

sas2flash -f 9207-8.bin -b mptsas2.rom

Downgrade LSI

Verify the new firmware version :

Downgrade LSI

To see the firmware version on OS :

# sas2ircu 0 DISPLAY

LSI Corporation SAS2 IR Configuration Utility.
Version 16.00.00.00 (2013.03.01) 
Copyright (c) 2009-2013 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved.

Read configuration has been initiated for controller 0
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Controller information
------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Controller type                         : SAS2308_2
  BIOS version                            : 7.37.00.00
  Firmware version                        : 19.00.00.00
  Channel description                     : 1 Serial Attached SCSI
  Initiator ID                            : 0
  Maximum physical devices                : 1023
  Concurrent commands supported           : 10240
  Slot                                    : 16
  Segment                                 : 0
  Bus                                     : 1
  Device                                  : 0
  Function                                : 0
  RAID Support                            : No
...

SAS2Flash Utility Guide : http://www.lsi.com/sep/Documents/oracle/files/SAS2_Flash_Utility_Software_Ref_Guide.pdf

Thread "Lots of trouble with LSI 9207-8e HBAs - Issue caused by LSI P20 92XX HBA Firmware" https://community.nexenta.com/thread/1053

CephNotes

Some notes about Ceph
Laurent Barbe @SIB

Downgrade LSI 9207 to P19 firmware

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