4.9 KiB
H710 B0 IT Mode Flashing
Continued instructions for flashing the H710 Mini Mono (B0 Revision). You should only continue here after following the Introduction Page. If you haven't done so already, go back.
Verify & SAS
You should still be in the FreeDOS live boot image. Double check you are on the right guide by running the following command again:
info
Your output should exactly match the below:
Product Name : PERC H710 Mini
ChipRevision : B0
grep.exe: Memory exhausted
If so, continue on! If not, stop and go back to the introduction page and get on the right guide.
We also need to note the SAS address of the card so we can program it back later. Run the following command:
sas
Take a screenshot of the console, or otherwise note down the address so you can put it back later. It's not a huge deal if you lose it, but it's easiest to program back the original address instead of generating a new one.
Cleaning The Card
Still in FreeDOS, run the following command to wipe the flash on the card and get rid of all Dell firmware. This will also flash the required SBR:
B0CROSS
Follow the prompts. If it finishes without error, it's time to reboot into Linux. Get the Linux live ISO from the ZIP ready to boot from, then tell FreeDOS to reboot:
reboot
Linux Time
You should now be booted into the Linux ISO from the ZIP. Use the following credentials to login: user/live
We highly recommend SSH'ing to the live ISO so you can copy/paste commands and not have to use the iDRAC virtual console. To do so, run the following to find the IP of the install:
ipinfo
It should spit out an IP. SSH to it, using the same user/live credentials. This is not required and you can continue on using the iDRAC (or physical) console, but it will be slightly more inconvenient.
Flashing IT Firmware
Now, still in Linux, we need to change to the root user:
sudo su -
Now we run the flashing script. Issue the following command to begin the process:
B0-H710
It should automatically do everything required to flash the card. If you don't get any unexpected errors and it completes, we need to reboot and program the SAS address back to finish. See the following note.
Note: For some reason, if power is not reset, the very first boot after crossflashing the card will cause a kernel panic - I believe it's iDRAC not letting go of something. This only happens the first reboot after crossflashing. There's two ways around this. If you don't have physical access to the server, just reboot now as normal back into the live ISO - the first time you'll get a kernel panic, and it will reboot again. Reboot back into the Live ISO, and the second time it will be fine as IDRAC is now aware his son is gone.
The easier way if you have physical access to the server, just completely remove power (unplug all power to the server and wait 20 seconds). Then plug power back in and boot the server back into Linux.
Programming SAS Address Back
Now rebooted back into the live Linux image, just run the following command, filling in the example address with your own, that you noted down earlier:
setsas 500605b123456777
It should succeed without errors. That's it! You can run the following command to get some info about your new card. You should be able to see your SAS address and the same firmware version:
info
sdfsdf
replace with b0 info
adasd
Unless you also need to flash boot images for booting off the card, you can now ditch all the live images and reboot back into your normal system, and enjoy your IT mode card.
Optional: Boot Images
Note: flashing these can add up to 2 minutes to server boot time if you have a lot of drives. Be sure you need them!
If you need to boot from drives connected to this adapter, you'll need to flash a boot image to it. Otherwise, skip it. This is what gives you the "press blahblah to enter the LSI boot configuration utility" text when the server boots. To flash the regular BIOS boot image:
flashboot /root/Bootloaders/mptsas2.rom
If you want to UEFI boot from drives connected to this adapter, you need to flash the UEFI boot image (the card can have both UEFI and BIOS boot images flashed):
flashboot /root/Bootloaders/x64sas2.rom
You can now ditch the live images and boot back into your normal system.
Optional: Reverting
If for some reason you need to revert back to the stock Dell PERC firmware, that's easy. Boot back into the FreeDOS live image, and run the following command:
B0REVERT
That's it! When it finishes, just reboot back to your normal system with the reboot command.
Note: This uses the unmodified latest Dell firmware
21.3.5-0002,A09extracted from the update EXE found here.