[ltp] Linux kernel instability? (Rant/Panic/Cry-for-help!)

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Tue, 30 Sep 2008, Thomas Kahle wrote:
> Sorry for another pointless "me too !" mail, but I have some problems
> with the iwl4965-driver. Sometimes it just dies while associating with
> some network, then messages like

Reasonably new driver, and both it and the stuff it depends on (mac80211,
nl80211, cfg80211 or whatever) is still seeing a LOT of heavy churn.  BTW,
the same applies to ath5k, ath9k, iwlifi, etc.   I.e. you are fated to use a
"too new" driver in any new ThinkPad for a small while yet (say, six months
or so).

You will *definately* have trouble with them from time to time.

That does mean you need to use the new compat-wireless to get fresh drivers,
though :(   And that limits you to a very recent kernel (compat-wireless had
to give up supporting older kernels because things changed way too much).

And I'd also get the suspend framework to shutdown the interfaces and remove
the drivers for now, just in case.  I had to do that with ipw2200 for a
while, until it was fixed enough to never disturb suspend/resume.

I can't help anyone using a "modern" suspend framework on how to do that,
though.  I kept the old-school Debian "hibernate" script around and use that
one, it never surprises me with a regression due to someone messing with
HAL, at least...

> keep appearing in the kernel log until one unloads the module.
> More annoying is the fact that this can also happen when going to
> Suspend to disk which will result in kernel panic and crash.

down the interfaces and remove the module before suspending...  and file
bugs, of course (but in this matter, it is probably useless to do so UNLESS
you are running a very recent version of the driver, i.e., compat-wireless
on 2.6.26).

> I tried to build compat-wireless but I just can't find how to get it
> compiled. I tried the versions of different days, but gave up.

Can't help you there, sorry :(  Maybe someone who uses compat-wireless will
step up to help you.

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh