2009/7/14 Chris Clayton <chris2553@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>: <snip> > I've updated to 2.6.31-rc3 this morning and done some more testing. > I'm now convinced that the rt61pci driver is somehow involved in > locking up the laptop. With the (Belkin) rt61 card inserted, the > machine will lock up even if I am doing nothing (no web browsing, > email or anything else at all) except running this script in a console > window: > > i=0 > while true; do > let i++ > echo -n "$i " > sleep 1 > done > > In the tests I have done so far, the counter has never gone beyond 240 > before the machine locked. With the (no-name) ath5k card inserted I > can use the laptop for normal web browsing, email, etc with no > problems - the counter in the script above gets to over 2000. > The freeze still happens with 2.6.31-rc3-git5, but I've been doing some more fact-finding. Running the script shown above and with the rt61-based card inserted, I can freeze the laptop even if I am doing nothing else on the laptop. When the freeze occurs, the laptop is effectively dead, no response to mouse movement or keyboard input and no response to pings from another machine on my network. However, if I eject the card, the laptop comes to life again. The key presses from when the laptop was frozen appear on screen and pings from another machine are responded to. The script continues to run and display the counter. I then reinsert the card and everything appears OK until the laptop freezes again a minute or two later. During a test run this morning the machine froze at (from the output of the script) 80, 235, 369, 538 and 672. Each time, ejecting the card brought the machine back to life. Trying the same test with the ath5k-based card inserted resulted in the script getting to 2300 without the laptop freezing, at which point I stopped the script. I started trying to isolate the change that causes the problem by reverting changes to the files in drivers/net/wireless/rt2x00. The change "rt2x00: Remove last usage of beacon_int from ieee80211_config" reverted cleanly and the kernel built OK, but I still got the freeze. "rt2x00: Remove usage of IEEE80211_CONF_CHANGE_BEACON_INTERVAL" also reverted cleanly but the kernel doesn't build because of dependencies on changes to mac80211. I'm afraid I am out of my depth now, so I will have to abandon that line of enquiry. I hope this new information helps track the problem down. I've attached the output from dmesg that shows the messages emitted when I eject the card, plus my config Thanks, Chris -- No, Sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn - Doctor Samuel Johnson
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rt61freeze.log
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.config
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