There is a deadlock in ieee80211_beacons_stop(), which is shown below: (Thread 1) | (Thread 2) | ieee80211_send_beacon() ieee80211_beacons_stop() | mod_timer() spin_lock_irqsave() //(1) | (wait a time) ... | ieee80211_send_beacon_cb() del_timer_sync() | spin_lock_irqsave() //(2) (wait timer to stop) | ... We hold ieee->beacon_lock in position (1) of thread 1 and use del_timer_sync() to wait timer to stop, but timer handler also need ieee->beacon_lock in position (2) of thread 2. As a result, ieee80211_beacons_stop() will block forever. This patch extracts del_timer_sync() from the protection of spin_lock_irqsave(), which could let timer handler to obtain the needed lock. Signed-off-by: Duoming Zhou <duoming@xxxxxxxxxx> --- drivers/staging/rtl8192u/ieee80211/ieee80211_softmac.c | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/drivers/staging/rtl8192u/ieee80211/ieee80211_softmac.c b/drivers/staging/rtl8192u/ieee80211/ieee80211_softmac.c index 1a43979939a..79f3fbe2555 100644 --- a/drivers/staging/rtl8192u/ieee80211/ieee80211_softmac.c +++ b/drivers/staging/rtl8192u/ieee80211/ieee80211_softmac.c @@ -528,9 +528,9 @@ static void ieee80211_beacons_stop(struct ieee80211_device *ieee) spin_lock_irqsave(&ieee->beacon_lock, flags); ieee->beacon_txing = 0; - del_timer_sync(&ieee->beacon_timer); spin_unlock_irqrestore(&ieee->beacon_lock, flags); + del_timer_sync(&ieee->beacon_timer); } void ieee80211_stop_send_beacons(struct ieee80211_device *ieee) -- 2.17.1