BCMSMAC freezes system on trivial oeprations
I use an HP Touchsmart tm2 laptop which has an onboard BRCM 4727- I used to compile my kernel with BCMSMAC module.
At first, I got regular kernel panics that, according to the printed-out stack originated somewhere from the BRCM driver and for which I could not exactly tell the reason (I assume it had something to do with roaming between APs).
Also, the laptop has a dedicated button to activating/deactivating the WLAN device, besides it has a BIOS wired funtion key, that does the same - at least that what it does in Windows and what HP says it should do.
When pressing either of the buttons, the kernel would hard-lock without any further notice and the computer could only be brought down through a hard reset.
This was awful enough, so I though I could try enabling the rfkill kernel compoenent as it seems related (layman at work, as you can tell). Recompiling that way (linux-next, by the way, *not* on wireless-testing yet) and also modifiying another few minor settings resulted in a desaster:
Since then - *even after I have reerted all changes and gone back to the kernel which was known to have worked last!!!* - as soon as the BCMSMAC module is either ocmpiled in or loaded, trivial commands such as ifconfig, iwconfig or just exit (!!!) freeze in a State D (awaiting IO) and can not be killed by even kill -9 or -1.
Shutting the system down is equally impossible without the help of SysReqs. Pushing the WLAN-Button still hardfreezes the system.
You can safely assume that practically *any* operation that is remotely related to the device, such as echo'ing to the rfkill /sys device, too, plus many commands that appear not to be related at all, such as "exit" will freeze in state D and cannot be killed by any means possible.
Pressing aforementioned "WLAN Button" will make these commands resume, just for a split second, before the system hard-locks.
Most puzzling about that, I find, is that reverting to the known-as-having-worked setup (exactly the same) has not got the system back to working.
I have two theories: Either there is some evil, hidden hardware switch on the device that has been triggered and not been reset since and that is causing all this right now, or some very crucial part of the system has been damaged by the regular hard-reset (which I deem unlikely since it would not explain why all sorts of programs freeze for no apparent reason).
So far, the system is practically not usuable - at least not with the driver activated - I'm in desperate need for your help. I can reformat and resetup everything, but I need to know a solution to this in the long term and I really don't know what else to try.
I need to reply to my own message. After I just returned home, it appeared that the computer had no problem whatsoever connecting to my local home network. As if nothing had ever happend. Well, the "WLAN-Button" still hardlocks the machine but apart from that I have no indication of problems.
I'll let you know as soon as I know more and wpulwd appreciate any kind of comments in the meantime.
regards,
Cedric
Quoted 29 lines · Cedric Sodhi
I use an HP Touchsmart tm2 laptop which has an onboard BRCM 4727- I used to compile my kernel with BCMSMAC module.
At first, I got regular kernel panics that, according to the printed-out stack originated somewhere from the BRCM driver and for which I could not exactly tell the reason (I assume it had something to do with roaming between APs).
Also, the laptop has a dedicated button to activating/deactivating the WLAN device, besides it has a BIOS wired funtion key, that does the same - at least that what it does in Windows and what HP says it should do.
When pressing either of the buttons, the kernel would hard-lock without any further notice and the computer could only be brought down through a hard reset.
This was awful enough, so I though I could try enabling the rfkill kernel compoenent as it seems related (layman at work, as you can tell). Recompiling that way (linux-next, by the way, *not* on wireless-testing yet) and also modifiying another few minor settings resulted in a desaster:
Since then - *even after I have reerted all changes and gone back to the kernel which was known to have worked last!!!* - as soon as the BCMSMAC module is either ocmpiled in or loaded, trivial commands such as ifconfig, iwconfig or just exit (!!!) freeze in a State D (awaiting IO) and can not be killed by even kill -9 or -1.
Shutting the system down is equally impossible without the help of SysReqs. Pushing the WLAN-Button still hardfreezes the system.
You can safely assume that practically *any* operation that is remotely related to the device, such as echo'ing to the rfkill /sys device, too, plus many commands that appear not to be related at all, such as "exit" will freeze in state D and cannot be killed by any means possible.
Pressing aforementioned "WLAN Button" will make these commands resume, just for a split second, before the system hard-locks.
Most puzzling about that, I find, is that reverting to the known-as-having-worked setup (exactly the same) has not got the system back to working.
I have two theories: Either there is some evil, hidden hardware switch on the device that has been triggered and not been reset since and that is causing all this right now, or some very crucial part of the system has been damaged by the regular hard-reset (which I deem unlikely since it would not explain why all sorts of programs freeze for no apparent reason).
So far, the system is practically not usuable - at least not with the driver activated - I'm in desperate need for your help. I can reformat and resetup everything, but I need to know a solution to this in the long term and I really don't know what else to try.
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1 - The distro is Gentoo
2 - Initially? I don't understand the question
3 - No, I did not find an easy way to obtain the trace on a panic at
first. I've by now learned about options which allow to dump the strace to flash.
4 - Gitweb tarball. Hence, I can no longer provide a SHA1, since it was
an archive. As stated in my last email the best I can provide you with is the following string:
Linux 2.6.39-rc6-next-20110506
5 - I think I've noted that the rfkill sysnode freezes as ifconfig,
iwconfig, exit and others do. Now, under these new circumstances where all problems (apart from the button-triggered freeze) seem to have vanished, I can try both, writing to it again and running rfkill. I'll do so after I have dispatched this mail as I do reckon with new freezes and hardlocks. I will provide further information in another email just in a short while.
regards,
Cedric
Quoted 25 lines · Arend van Spriel
Quoted 1 line · Cedric Sodhi
I use an HP Touchsmart tm2 laptop which has an onboard BRCM 4727- I used to compile my kernel with BCMSMAC module.
Hi Cedric,
This story is quite erratic so I want to get some basic information first.
1) what linux distro are you using?
2) what kernel version are you running (initially)?Quoted 1 line
At first, I got regular kernel panics that, according to the printed-out stack originated somewhere from the BRCM driver and for which I could not exactly tell the reason (I assume it had something to do with roaming between APs).
3) do you have any trace information on the 'regular kernel panics'?
Quoted 5 lines
Also, the laptop has a dedicated button to activating/deactivating the WLAN device, besides it has a BIOS wired funtion key, that does the same - at least that what it does in Windows and what HP says it should do.
When pressing either of the buttons, the kernel would hard-lock without any further notice and the computer could only be brought down through a hard reset.
This was awful enough, so I though I could try enabling the rfkill kernel compoenent as it seems related (layman at work, as you can tell). Recompiling that way (linux-next, by the way, *not* on wireless-testing yet) and also modifiying another few minor settings resulted in a desaster:
4) how did you obtain linux-next? git? when using git can you provide sha1?
Quoted 1 line
Since then - *even after I have reerted all changes and gone back to the kernel which was known to have worked last!!!* - as soon as the BCMSMAC module is either ocmpiled in or loaded, trivial commands such as ifconfig, iwconfig or just exit (!!!) freeze in a State D (awaiting IO) and can not be killed by even kill -9 or -1.
5) could you try the 'rfkill' command?
Gr. AvS
Signature · 2 lines
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