The IBM M1015 is a widely available LSI SAS2008-based RAID controller card. It is an extremely popular choice for home and enthusiast server builders, especially among FreeNAS users, for its low price point (~$60 US secondhand on eBay) and excellent performance.

In essence, it’s hardware equivalent to the LSI 9211-8i; officially, it’s the 9220-8i, sold to OEMs to be rebadged. Two SFF-8087 mini-SAS quad-channel SAS2/SATA3 ports, no cache, no battery backup. Cross-flash it to LSI generic firmware in IT mode, they say, and you get an excellent SATA III HBA on the cheap. Turns out that’s easier said than done, especially if you’re working with a recent consumer motherboard.

The comprehensive, only slightly dated, instructions are here. Ironically, I only found them after I had pieced together the procedure for myself.

At this point, FreeNAS 9.10 is compatible with version P20 firmware. User Spearfoot on the FreeNAS forums has a package containing the utilities and firmware files. I’ve also attached it to this post: m1015.

Notes:

• If your motherboard lacks an easily accessible EFI shell, use the one in rEFInd.
• If you get the error “application not started from shell”, that’s an EFI shell version compatibility issue. Use the shell provided in the link.
• “No LSI SAS adapters found!” from sas2flsh.exe indicates that likely IBM firmware is still present. Use megarec to erase it.
• “ERROR: Failed to initialize PAL. Exiting Program.” means your motherboard is not compatible with the DOS sas2flsh. Use the EFI version.

Additional References:

• GeekGoneOld on the FreeNAS forums has a quick guide: #18
• And a useful reply in that same thread: #28
• Redditor /u/PhyxsiusPrime describes the EFI shell compatibility workaround via rEFInd here.