More stability with latest SAS2LP-MV8 firmware

FYI,

I've had spurious redballs occuring due to random sas channel lock ups.  This would happen during intensive I/O on a card (parity checks).

After upgrading the cards to the latest firmware 4.0.0.1808 , the issues have disappeared.

Link to firmware:

ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/driver/SAS/Marvell/MV8/SAS2/Firmware/4.0.0.1808/

I used Rufus to create a FreeDOS bootable USB stick, and put the content of the firmware RAR file onto it.

https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/downloads

Booted up in DOS and upgraded all 3 SAS cards at once.  Powercycled, and that was it.

Thank you for this.  I suspect at least some of the issues we have seen are related to firmware and driver defects, so this is very welcome, especially when confirmed by more users.

I've started a rough Firmware upgrades wiki page, to collect info on same.  I added a first section for SAS2LP-MV8 firmware, with a link to here.  Please feel free to edit, enhance, rewrite, etc.  I'm hoping that users with experience with any card with upgradeable firmware will add to the page, making it useful for all users, and then keep it updated for newer hardware and newer firmware.

The Firmware upgrades page began as a dump of old firmware info for Seagate drives, now somewhat obsolete.  Anyone who wishes can freely rework it!

i'm getting "Oops!! Erase Failed at 00000000!!" when running the mvf.exe on 9485.bin

Checksum is ok.

Am i doing something wrong here? First time trying to flash though.

Weird,

I just ran the mvf command line, first listing the available controllers and it printed out all three (adapter 0 to adapter 2).

Then I ran mvf to flash and it erased, reflashed and moved on to the subsequent adapter, doing all 3 back to back.    Didn't have an error.

If it even fails to erase, maybe there are other flags available to list the device data it reads?  Try backing up the existing firmware (i believe there's a flag for that) and see if it can read properly.

That's weird, i get the following trying to backup:

No valid image exist on specified adapter!!

I have only one adapter. and it has the correct adapter nr.

Though it's not showing the correct ver. and subver. id's

Ver 00

Subver 00

This should be different i guess?

Definitely interested to hear about others' experiences.  I wonder, though, if I can't flash it via my Supermicro board, since I had to flash my m1015 on a different mobo.

I've been getting the occasional redball as well, but it seems pretty random.  Reseating the SATA cable seems to set me straight, but the last drive that redballed was / is connected to the MV8.

I flashed it via the Supermicro X9SCM motherboard

I also did it on my x9sxm motherboard. No dice.

So i tried it on my main desktop and SUCCESS

Don't know why but it worked. Server is up and running again.

Hello!

Does anybody has a changelog of the new Bios?

And: Has somebody checked, if the resume from S3 problem has been solved with the new FW release?

Can any of you guys provide step by step instructions on the procedure? I am experiencing some redballing as well.. and wanted to try to upgrade the firmware.

I have found the files, but the instructions were not included. I have upgraded the f/w on m1015 with the help of clear instructions from this community.

Thanks in advance guys.

I guess I can use the instructions for the saslp.. 

Flashing Firmware:

1. Boot the system to DOS.

2. Flash the BIOS using the

mvf.exe

file with the following command at the DOS

prompt (where *** represents the name of the bin file used):

a:\>mvf ***.bin

This automatically flashes the BIOS.

3. When the flashing is completed, reboot the system.

The new firmware is now flashed to your system’s BIOS

I pulled all SATA cables, booted into FreeDOS and flashed the controller using:

c:\>mvf 9485.bin

The whole process was extremely fast so I'm not sure if I'm really running the latest firmware now. Is there any way to check this with the server up and running?

Yes. Watch the boot up when you turn the power on!

After suffering from various problems after adding a Intel  RES2SV240 to my SAS2LP-MV8 (redballs, parity check data rate close to zero during process, preclear script stopping in an unreproducable manner), I updated to the latest firmware from 4.0.0.1800 to 4.0.0.1812 and everythings seems to be back to normal. Thanks for pointing out how to update, worked on Supermicro X9SCL+-f with all cables connected, update process was finished after a few seconds.