Re: Could ath9k and rt2800pci bugs be related?

[Tony Houghton <h@realh.co.uk>]

On Tue, 15 Mar 2011 19:05:27 +0530
Mohammed Shafi <shafi.wireless@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 6:49 PM, Tony Houghton <h@realh.co.uk> wrote:
> > On Tue, 15 Mar 2011 13:17:40 +0530
> > Mohammed Shafi <shafi.wireless@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 10:18 PM, Tony Houghton <h@realh.co.uk>
> >> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > I've just bought an Acer Aspire Revo 3700 and this had very
> >> > similar symptoms with a different adapter. Luckily another
> >> > customer had posted about it on the vendor's website and his fix
> >> > works for me. The fix is to blacklist the rt2800pci module and
> >> > the rt2860sta driver seems to work quite happily without it.
> >>
> >> can you please check by disabling the supicious rt modules and see
> >> whether this problems happens.
> >
> > Yes, I did blacklist rt2800pci and the system works correctly
> > without the module loaded. Even the wireless connection still works.
> 
> Ok still there is also one or two guys reporting this locking issue,
> so we need to be very sure.

I'm afraid you misunderstood me. The rt28* issue is on a different
system with an Ralink adapter. AFAIK the actual rt28* modules have
nothing to do with the Atheros problem. I only made a connection because
the symptoms are so similar, and I thought it possible that the two
different drivers might share some code, but it's more likely to be a
coincidence.

Has anyone else reported the rt28* problem and/or are the developers
aware of it? I know I'm not the only affected person because I read
about it in a customer comment on the vendor's web site for the Acer
R3700.

> >> for quick check please try with the latest compat wireless.
> >
> > How do I do that?
> >
> > I would also be willing to add extra debugging messages to ath9k to
> > help track down the AR9285 problem. I'm a C programmer, but not a
> > kernel hacker so I think I would need some advice about which
> > functions to examine.
> 
> No its nothing to do with kernel hacking, its just a wireless package.

For kernel hacking I meant I would like to experiment with the code
myself. If you can't reproduce the problem I think it would be very
helpful if I can make it print extra messages to narrow it down. If you
could tell me something like, "The shutdown process should start at
function X and end at function Y," I'll know better which code to
experiment with. BTW, all types of wireless shutdown seem to be
affected, whether I turn off the WAP, click Disconnect in network
manager, press the rfkill switch, suspend, shutdown or rmmod ath9k.

Should I use printk to print the debugging messages or something else?
As there is the debug module parameter I guess the latter. Is there also
some sort of sleep function which I can safely add after each debug
message to make sure the message is made visible before the crash?