[ltp] T40p madwifi and acpi troubles

[Gilles Magnier]

Hi all,

I'm currently trying to make madwifi driver working with acpi under linux
2.6.1 but i hit a strange bug.

Note: i use kernel.org 2.6.1 kernel with acpi enabled, on a T40p with
latest bios (2.11) and latest Embedded Controller (2.04).

I've done all my tests with T40p docked and everything goes fine, the 
card is
detected and network is working well.

But when i boot undocked, or undock the T40 i get lots of
"ath0: hardware error; resetting" and network get about 99% packet loss.
(msg appears when setting up the interface with ifconfig and stops appearing
when setting it down. using external AC or battry doesnt change anything)

searching in google doesn't give me any clue of what may be in cause.

So i've done more testing :
- with acpi=off -> everything works well
- Fixing DSDT doesn't help, nor acpi patchs nor -mm2 branch.

but sometimes it was working without any reason ...

then, i noticed it was always under load (ie compiling a kernel).

in fact running "while true; do echo 1 > /dev/null ; done"
makes everything working well.
Anyway i'ts not really a good solution for battry life isnt it ? :)

if i kill the buzy-wait-loop i get the same problem again...

I guess it's an acpi/bios problem but i may guess wrong.

i plan to make a bug repport to madwifi-users ML but archives of this
ML seems down at the moment and it may be a good idea to known
if i'm the only one having this problem.

So, Have anyone successfully used madwifi drivers under 2.6 with acpi ?
if yes with whitch bios/EC version ?

Thanks for any help, clue, anything ...


Gilles.