Well it’s apparently running way too hot, but again I don’t really know how to monitor that or what temps I should be targeting.
Yeah, hbas got no thermal monitors, rule of thumb is slap a fan directly on the heatsink (or towards it at least) and hope it is enough unless you’re running server grade fans in a server chassis that are screaming at a calm 80dB.
Anyway, I think you got a lot of advice and it is pulling you in a lot of directions at the same time.
The reason why I keep broken recording the firmware update is because it doesn’t require any physical actions. The older firmwares did have actual faults. If updating the firmware doesn’t fix the immediate issue (which it might), it is still the most cost/effort effective step & could prevent other issues.
Still have issues afterwards? Well at least you’ve done a good thing and can now fully focus on physically replacing things, with a known good firmware & reduce false positives. Wouldn’t it suck to replace drives & mail things back for an rma, only for it to still be a bug due to old firmware?
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Wait, so you’re suggesting the firmware might fix the SMART failure, not just the overheating?
You did, this: SOLVED - LSI SAS2008 HBA (aka 9211-8i ?) Q: Firmware Upgrade? to stop BIOS detection + fix hotswap not working. | TrueNAS Community
But I don’t actually understand that thread at all. I’ve downloaded the zip, but then I need to create a bootable USB, and boot into it, but how? And then what? I’m utterly lost.
EDIT: Okay, so I have a bootable USB, I think. But what do I do with the firmware zip? How do I get it somewhere I can use it? Do I also need the sas2flash executable, or does FreeDos have support for that already?
I’m going to have to disconnect my monitor from this computer and connect it to the TrueNAS box, too, which isn’t helpful.
You create a FreeDOS bootable USB drive with a software named Rufus, which you can easily find with a search engine. That information is also in the thread you linked. Unzip the downloaded software and place the resulting files on that USB drive, too.
You boot from that USB by plugging into your machine, connecting a monitor and keyboard, reboot, invoke the boot menu and pick the USB drive. Check your mainboard/server manual for which key does that (invoke boot menu).
Alternatively go into the BIOS setup utility (also check the mainboard docs for the key that does that - it’s frequently DEL or F2) and change the boot order to boot from USB first.
Boot from the USB drive, then invoke the flash utility as should be documented in a textfile inside the zip archive.
It doesn’t show up in Windows Explorer, so there doesn’t seem to be a way to do this.
Then you did not properly create a FreeDOS bootable. Such a drive will show up in Explorer.
I used FullUSB from here: The FreeDOS Project
It shows up in Explorer and I was able to copy the firmware files onto it, but my TrueNAS box won’t boot from it. If I select it as the first boot option in the BIOS, it boots to TrueNAS. If I enter the boot menu and select the USB, it boots into the BIOS.
Then it’s not bootable for some reason. You need to figure out why, but this is out of the scope of TrueNAS.
Is that the right file? I used LiveCD the first time, because that’s the one that talks about booting from it, but that didn’t appear in Windows Explorer so I couldn’t drag the firmware onto it. FullUSB does appear in Windows Explorer, but won’t boot and only mentions being an installer.
All the Rufus options are greyed out, so it’s not like there’s anything I can do differently other than using a different file. I’m at a loss here.
EDIT: LegacyCD doesn’t show up in Windows Explorer either.
You should be able to put the USB drive in your Windows machine, start Rufus, then pick “FreeDOS” somewhere in Rufus and format the drive. No need to download FreeDOS or anything else but Rufus.
Refer to the Rufus documentation or use a search engine, please - I don’t have Windows and Rufus available right now.
Should find something like this which looks pretty reasonable:
You need to format with MBR, FAT32, select FreeDOS, then in your system’s BIOS enable legacy boot if that is not the case already.
Apparently I can’t do that unless I buy and install a GPU: Why can’t I enable CSM on my new motherboard? | Scottie's Tech.Info
That’s bad but sorry, in that case I’m running out of ideas. Does that archive with the firmware update possibly also contain an EFI binary or DOS only?
There are folders for sas2flash_dos_rel, sas2flash_win_x64_rel, sas2flash_win_x86_rel, and sasbios_rel. The thread also contains links to archives for UEFI, FreeBSD, and UEFI BSD.
You can run the “win” variants directly from Windows and you could boot your system into a Windows installation without legacy boot, UEFI only.
You could also place the content of the UEFI archive on a plain GPT+FAT32 USB stick, boot into the UEFI shell instead of TrueNAS, then start the binary from the stick via the UEFI shell. Instructions should be inside the archive.
I got another email today saying sdh now has 8 unreadable sectors, but when I go into my dashboard I now see no issues with any of the drives. Not even the drive that started this whole thing.
Digging further it turns out that it’s renamed the drives somehow, so sdh is the same drive as sdg was earlier. So there’s still only one drive showing issues, the ZFS errors have all been cleared.
sdh is still the only drive showing a completed Extended SMART test. It’s now showing two of them, both failed, and is failing its Short tests as well now. sdg and sdd both show extended tests that were aborted. No other drives show even an attempt at an Extended test.
Would I need to actually install Windows to do that? I can’t figure out how to run it off a USB. And then installing it would require an empty drive to install onto, would it not?
Yes, of course. But you could install to a USB drive, if I am not mistaken. There are instructions on the net how to create a portable Windows installation on a USB drive.
If all else fails …
But I would try the UEFI based method first, check the contents of the archive named “efi something” and proceed from there.
All it has in it is sas2flash.efi. No firmware, no instructions beyond the generic sas2flash manual, and I can’t find anything in there that jumps out as being relevant either (though I am way out of my depth at this point and really don’t understand any of this…but the clock is ticking on the WD RMA).
So with the USB drive inserted you simply type “sas2flash” into the EFI shell.
You can copy over the firmware files from one of the other archives.