Some links on SuperMicro X10 and “PEI–Could Not Find Recovery Image…”
Posted by jpluimers on 2023/02/06
An X10 machine here hardly needs reboots, but at one point it did, and got a dreaded message “PEI--Could Not Find Recovery Image...“, so I started Googling.
- [Wayback/Archive] “pei” “could not find recovery image” – Google Search returned only one Russian thread: [Wayback/Archive] Восстановление BIOS на Supermicro X10SRi.
- Hard to read, I dug further with [Wayback/Archive] “PEI–Could Not Find Recovery Image…” – Google Search and [Wayback/Archive] “pei could not find recovery image” – Google Search, which both went for inexact matches: bummer.
The good news is that few people bump into this problem. The bad news is that the ones that do, usually do not find a way to solve it. For example:
What helped in retrospect, was using IPMI (which still worked), re-flash the most recent BIOS, then powered down the machine and rebooted: it worked.
Not sure if I will be so lucky next time, but via [Wayback/Archive] supermicro “could not find recovery image” – Google Search , I found the the idea from [Wayback/Archive] X9SRL-F POSTs only via BIOS recovery process | ServeTheHome Forums that might help: solder a new BIOS Flash ship. Definitely not for the fainthearted: [Wayback/Archive] Bios Recovery via Chip Reprogramming Supermicro X10SLM+-LN4F | ServeTheHome Forums.
I got at the BIOS programming via IPMI idea via the second set of searches above, which got me at [Wayback/Archive] Supermicro BIOS recovery – SUPER.ROM – Server Fault (thanks anonymous [Wayback/Archive] user303507):
Get mainboards with a “-F” in the product name. Then you have IPMI and can even flash a faulty BIOS. It requires a key from Supermicro to activate this feature which is not for free
…
The 2nd flash area can also be fully impacted by a faulty flash process, therefore the trick with Ctrl+HOME does not work.
This worked because all my SuperMicro mainboards are of the “-F” type and I had the key.
If you don’t have the key it can be generated, for instance with the bash script I published in Supermicro Bios Update – YouTube.
You can find back most letters and numbers SuperMicro uses at [Wayback/Archive1/Archive2] Motherboards (Intel UP) | Product Naming Conventions | Super Micro Computer, Inc. which has a few tables like this:
Section Representation Options Prefix Product Type • MBD = Motherboard 1st CPU Type Supported • X = Intel Xeon processors 1st + 2nd Generation & CPU • X11 = 11th gen. Xeon Scalable Processors
• X11 = 11th gen. Xeon® (E3-1200 v6/v5)
• X10 = 10th gen. Xeon® (E5-2600 v4/v3, E5-1600 v3)
• X9 = 9th gen. Xeon® (E5-2600 v2/E5-2600, E5-1600 v2)
• X8 = 8th gen. Xeon® (QPI 6.4 GT/s)3rd Number of
CPU Supported• S = Single processor 4th Chipset /
Board Type• A = Workstation
• P = Purley with Socket P (X11)
• S = SkyLake (X11 Greenlow)
• R = Patsburg with Socket R (X9)
• R = Grantley with Socket R3 (X10)
• L = Lynx Point
• I = Ibex Peak (3420/3400)
• T = Tylersburg (X58)
• C = Cougar Point5th Architecture
Application/Feature• i = SATA only
• L = Low Cost
• M = Micro ATX
• G = GPU Optimized
• T = Twin Architecture
• D = MicroCloud Architecture
• W = WIO Architecture
• U = UIO Architecture
• A = Legacy / WS for Socket B2/R/H2/H3/H4
• H = Alternative 1
• E = Alternative 2
• V = Alternative 36th Feature • F = IPMI
• LN4 = Four LANs
• LN6 = Six LANs
• X = PCIX
• 6 = SAS2 (6Gbps)
• 7 = Broadcom SAS 6Gbps
• C = Broadcom SAS 12Gbps
• T = 10Gb LAN
• TP = 10G SFP+
• D = Dual Nodes
• S = Cost Optimized
• N = NVMe support
• G = Intel Graphics
• V = VMD/VROC
Note that it at least misses the 3 in -3F, (for instance setting apart X9SRI-3F from X9SRI-F), which seems to differentiate between SAS/SATA (3F) and SATA only (F).
More links
I forgot which path lead me to:
- [Wayback/Archive] Supermicro “BIOS Resilience” – Google Search, but that got me [Wayback/Archive] Supermicro X10SRH-CF no POST after BIOS update : homelab, which does not make me happy: if both BIOS copies fail and BIOS flash fails too, then the soldering job is the only try left.
- [Wayback/Archive] “Can’t find FID string.” – Google Search which I didn’t bump into, but is easy to resolve: update IPMI first (as per [Wayback/Archive] FAQ Entry | Online Support | Support – Super Micro Computer, Inc.).
- Both [Wayback/Archive] “PEI–Could Not Find Recovery Image…” – Google Search and [Wayback/Archive] “pei could not find recovery image” – Google Search got me the below links, which basically are duplicates of what I described and linked to above:
- [Wayback/Archive] Updating and Recovering SuperMicro BIOS – scriptech.io
- [Wayback/Archive] How to recover a supermicro board with a broken bios firmware
- [Wayback/Archive] Problems upon first boot with Supermicro X11SSM-F | Page 2 | TrueNAS Community
- [Wayback/Archive] Silicon Mechanics SuperMicro BIOS recovery procedure
–jeroen
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
Leave a Reply