LSI 9211-8i IT-mode (firmware) flashing USB

Overview

This builds an image file which, when booted from a USB on a machine with an LSI 9211-8i Host Bus Adapter (HBA), will automatically flash the HBA with IT firmware.

Disabling LSI BIOS

By default, the flashing utility flashes both firmware and bios. This allows booting from an HBA-attached disk, but may result in slow boot times. To get in faster boot times, but disable booting from the HBA, you can flash just the firmware via ./build.sh --disable-bios.

Requirements

• Docker for building the image
• A USB to write the image to
• An LSI 9211-8i connected to a UEFI motherboard

Use

These steps are for building on a Linux host. The image can also be built and flashed from a Windows or Mac, but those steps are not listed here.

1. From the project directory, build the image

   # Firmware + BIOS
   ./build.sh
   
   # Firmware only:
   ./build.sh --disable-bios

2. Flash the resulting image to a USB

   dd if=flasher.img bs=4M status=progress of=/dev/<your usb>

3. Boot the USB on the target machine, and wait for the startup script to flash the new firmware
4. Enjoy!

Debugging

Requirements

• qemu

Instructions

Run ./debug.sh to boot the image with QEMU. While the flashing process will fail, it can be used to debug boot issue with the image and UEFI script

References

• sas2flash
• EFI scripting guide
• EFI shell reference
• IT firmware flashing guide #1
• IT firmware flashing guide #2
• Slow boot times