[ltp] System hang on network connect

[Phil Shotton]

I've just come back from a weekend away. The hotel had an open wireless 
network for guests. Every time my system connected the screen froze - 
took me a while to work out the wireless  was responsible.

I'm running Ubuntu 7.10 on a T60p with an Atheros AR5418 wireless 
controller. I'm using the Windose wireless driver with ndiswrapper (I 
could not get the linux driver to work).

When I log in network manager attempts to connect to the hotel wireless, 
and as soon as it connects the system seems to hang completely but 
sometimes the mouse pointer still moves. On one occasion I had an xterm 
focussed, and I could still type but as soon as I hit enter it froze. 
Similarly on a couple of occasions I could switch to a vt and type my 
login, but it hung before I could type a password.

In /var/log/messages it shows:
    ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): wlan0: link becomes ready

and then (sometimes) a single line with a hex number such as: c012a373
and then (sometimes) a "Modules linked in: " line like the following:

Apr 27 07:56:28 laptop kernel: [ 3228.676000] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): 
wlan0: link becomes ready
Apr 27 07:56:32 laptop kernel: [ 3232.688000] c01b4335
Apr 27 07:56:32 laptop kernel: [ 3232.688000] Modules linked in: battery 
ac thinkpad_acpi thermal fan button af_packet e1000 ndiswrapper nvram 
binfmt_misc rfcomm l2cap vmnet(P) nfsd exportfs lockd sunrpc ppdev 
acpi_cpufreq cpufreq_ondemand cpufreq_userspace cpufreq_conservative 
cpufreq_powersave cpufreq_stats freq_table container sbs video bay dock 
ipv6 radeon drm nls_iso8859_1 nls_cp437 vfat fat uinput vmmon(P) 
coretemp parport_pc lp parport joydev snd_hda_intel snd_pcm_oss 
snd_mixer_oss pcmcia snd_pcm snd_seq_dummy snd_seq_oss snd_seq_midi 
snd_rawmidi snd_seq_midi_event snd_seq snd_timer snd_seq_device pcspkr 
hci_usb yenta_socket rsrc_nonstatic pcmcia_core snd bluetooth psmouse 
serio_raw irtty_sir sir_dev nsc_ircc irda crc_ccitt soundcore iTCO_wdt 
iTCO_vendor_support snd_page_alloc shpchp pci_hotplug intel_agp agpgart 
evdev ext3 jbd mbcache sr_mod cdrom sg sd_mod ata_generic ehci_hcd ahi 
ata_piix libata scsi_mod uhci_hcd usbcore processor fuse apparmor commoncap

This may (or may not!) repeat several times with a different hex number.
I thought my machine had completely hosed, but when I got back home and 
connected to my own wireless network it all worked fine (and continues 
to work fine back at the office).

Any ideas what's going on here? I'd hate to go on a long business trip 
and find I can't connect to the hotel network.

Thanks
Phil