Of Samsung SSD's, LSI HBA's and SSD firmwares.

Introduction

Everyone loves SSD's, that's no doubt but when it comes to updating the of-so-very-important firmware things become quite complicated quickly:

First, I don't run Windows or OSX on my most important hardware (the hypervisors/workstations).

Second, I run most of my SSD's behind an LSI HBA (to benefit from the cache and from the processing power of the LSI card).

Here's how I did -without- Windows or OSX and -without- taking my SSD's out of my boxes.

A few words of warning

This post is not a full "Method Of Procedure" and is very specific.
It is -NOT- for the average user and it requires some good Linux knowledge.
If things go wrong, it may brick/destroy your SSD, your PC and even your HD TV.
It will most likely require to be adapted in most cases unless you have a very similar setup.
The purpose of this post is to show that there are alternative ways available and that you do NOT have to tear up your gear only to update firmware.

Chances are that this might work for SSD's from Intel, Crucial and others but you won't know until you've found a way to decrypt/un-obfuscate their firmwares.

Please do not attempt to go through these steps unless you know what you are doing.

Hardware Setup

In short, deep within that Precision T5610 running RHEL6.8, there'a Samsung mSata SSD inside a small SATA enclosure connected to an LSI HBA.
Thankfully, MegaCli can upgrade arbitrary firmware on drives connected to an LSI HBA.

Technical Procedure

Obtain firmware from Samsung

If you have a Samsung SSD from before the 850 times, you're in luck because you don't have to go through the Windows-Only Samsung Magician Application. For 850's and later, the firmware is included in Samsung Magician and not available as a separate download anymore.

Download your firmware from Samsung at: Samsung SSD Tools Download
For that SSD, it came in the form of a Win/Mac ISO image:

# ls -l *iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3117056 May 2 06:47 Samsung_SSD_840_EVO_mSATA_EXT43B6Q_Win_Mac.iso

Extract firmware payload from download

The firmware image is deep within the download. Let's extract it:

# mount -o loop $(pwd)/Samsung_SSD_840_EVO_mSATA_EXT43B6Q_Win_Mac.iso /mnt
# losetup /dev/loop4 /mnt/isolinux/btdsk.img
# mkdir /tmp/2
# mount /dev/loop4 /tmp/2
mount: block device /dev/loop4 is write-protected, mounting read-only
# cp -afv /tmp/2/samsung/DSRD/FW .
`/tmp/2/samsung/DSRD/FW' -> `./FW'
`/tmp/2/samsung/DSRD/FW/EXT43B6Q' -> `./FW/EXT43B6Q'
`/tmp/2/samsung/DSRD/FW/EXT43B6Q/EXT43B6Q.enc' -> `./FW/EXT43B6Q/EXT43B6Q.enc'

Here's the firmware image (note that its name is related to the actual firmware version):

# ls -l
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1048576 Sep 23 2015 EXT43B6Q.enc

Decrypt firmware

Several posts on the net mentionned that the above image was encrypted. It surely did look like some binary garbage and not like a firmware of any kind.

Then, I found this post where someone had posted a simply python script to decrypt the encrypted payload downloaded from Samsung's site.

Since I wasn't sure if the drive would accept an excrypted firmware through MegaCli, I decided to decrypt the firmware first. I placed a copy of the python script here.

# python ./samsung_ssd_decode.py EXT43B6Q.enc
# ls -lrt
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1048576 Jul 22 11:03 EXT43B6Q.enc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1048576 Jul 22 11:03 EXT43B6Q.enc.decoded

Find the PhysDrv ID and apply firmware

Reboot and Power Cycle (just to be sure)

Since I didn't want to take risks, I rebooted the workstation and verified that it came back cleanly.

Once it did, I powered off the system and brought it back on. Again, it came back properly.

Now if I could extract 850 firmware from Samsung Magician app, I'd be a happy camper.

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