[ath9k-devel] kernel panic possibly related to ath9k

[ath9k-devel] kernel panic possibly related to ath9k

[MadLoisae at gmx.net]

Hi Guys,

since a few weeks I am using an Atheros based WLAN PCMCIA-card as AP in 
my linux-gateway.
The only client for this network is at the moment a Nokia E72, I am 
using hostapd in version 0.6.10, I have a WPA/WPA2 PSK encrypted network 
on channel 2 configured.
About two times a week my box crashes, now I have removed the panic=30 
out of my kernel command line and captured an panic (also attached here, 
but I don't know if the attachments work trough the mailing list): 
http://cableguy.no-ip.com/Files/panic.jpg

I think the panic is caused by the ath9k driver.
I have attached my kernel config and my dmesg-output from my last boot, 
I am using kernel 2.6.35.4 on debian lenny.
Hardware is a Via Nehemiah CPU with Via CLE266 chipset, 1GB RAM, CF and 
HDD (both on secondary IDE channel), DVB-Card (Terratec Cinergy 1200 
DVB-C) and WLAN-Card (Atheros AR4516) in PCMCIA-Slot. I am using two of 
the 4 onboard Realtek-LANs, I do not use the onboard soundcard.

lspci:
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8623 [Apollo CLE266]
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8633 [Apollo Pro266 AGP]
00:08.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. 
RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
00:09.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. 
RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. 
RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
00:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. 
RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
00:0c.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev 82)
00:0c.1 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev 82)
00:0d.0 Multimedia controller: Philips Semiconductors SAA7146 (rev 01)
00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 
Controller (rev 80)
00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 
Controller (rev 80)
00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 
Controller (rev 80)
00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 82)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8235 ISA Bridge
00:11.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. 
VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. 
VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 50)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8623 [Apollo 
CLE266] integrated CastleRock graphics (rev 03)
02:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5416 
802.11abgn Wireless PCI Adapter (rev 01)

cat /proc/interrupts:
  0:     454776    XT-PIC-XT        timer
  1:          2    XT-PIC-XT        i8042
  2:          0    XT-PIC-XT        cascade
  3:          2    XT-PIC-XT     
  4:        919    XT-PIC-XT        serial
  7:     446149    XT-PIC-XT        yenta, uhci_hcd:usb2, ath9k, eth0
  8:          2    XT-PIC-XT        rtc
  9:          0    XT-PIC-XT        acpi
 10:          1    XT-PIC-XT        uhci_hcd:usb4, VIA8233
 11:     133037    XT-PIC-XT        yenta, ehci_hcd:usb1, uhci_hcd:usb3, 
saa7146 (0), eth1
 12:          4    XT-PIC-XT        i8042
 14:          0    XT-PIC-XT        pata_via
 15:      22687    XT-PIC-XT        pata_via

The kernel-taint is caused by vmware-server running on this machine, 
here is also my lsmod:
Module                  Size  Used by
vmnet                  22670  11
vmmon                1784348  5
padlock_aes             4033  0
ath9k                  75660  0
ath9k_common            3618  1 ath9k
ath9k_hw              255175  2 ath9k,ath9k_common
ath                     6252  3 ath9k,ath9k_common,ath9k_hw
budget_av              11414  9
mac80211              113014  2 ath9k,ath9k_common
saa7146_vv             30498  1 budget_av
videobuf_dma_sg         5927  1 saa7146_vv
videobuf_core          10394  2 saa7146_vv,videobuf_dma_sg
budget_core             4916  1 budget_av
saa7146                10230  3 budget_av,saa7146_vv,budget_core
ttpci_eeprom            1156  1 budget_core
tda10021                3862  1 budget_av
cfg80211              104553  4 ath9k,ath9k_common,ath,mac80211
tda10023                4947  1 budget_av

I am familar with applying kernel patches, but I am not able to program 
anysth. :-/

Thanks for any help!

best regards
Alois
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[ath9k-devel] kernel panic possibly related to ath9k

[Peter Stuge]

MadLoisae at gmx.net wrote:
> WLAN-Card (Atheros AR4516) in PCMCIA-Slot

Note that it's CardBus, not PCMCIA. We know what you mean, but
there's a big difference. PCMCIA is only 16-bit. CardBus is PCI, but
backwards compatible with PCMCIA.

Anyway, unfortunately there is no real support for 5416 here, since
it's one of the oldest ath9k hardware around. The situation may
improve still, but I believe that will mostly be a side-effect of
other improvements made in the driver.

I would try some hardware which uses another driver, but if you'd
like to stick with Atheros hardware then at least look for a card
using the very latest generation of the chipset.

This is difficult with CardBus since the absolutely most recent
hardware isn't even PCI and so can't be used for CardBus cards. Maybe
you can find a CardBus card which uses AR9280 though.

Note that
http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/ath9k/products/external
suggests that Ubiquiti SR71C uses AR9280 but that product is not
listed on ubnt.com (anymore?) and older datasheets suggest that it
uses AR9160.


//Peter

[ath9k-devel] kernel panic possibly related to ath9k

[MadLoisae at gmx.net]

Hi Peter,

thanks for the answer.

 > Anyway, unfortunately there is no real support for 5416 here, since
 > it's one of the oldest ath9k hardware around. The situation may
 > improve still, but I believe that will mostly be a side-effect of
 > other improvements made in the driver.

So it's just luck that the card "works" at is does and I maybe there 
will be never any fix for this problem? Can I do anysth except throwing 
away the card? :-/

 > I would try some hardware which uses another driver, but if you'd
 > like to stick with Atheros hardware then at least look for a card
 > using the very latest generation of the chipset.

 > This is difficult with CardBus since the absolutely most recent
 > hardware isn't even PCI and so can't be used for CardBus cards. Maybe
 > you can find a CardBus card which uses AR9280 though.

 > Note that
 > http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/ath9k/products/external
 > suggests that Ubiquiti SR71C uses AR9280 but that product is not
 > listed on ubnt.com (anymore?) and older datasheets suggest that it
 > uses AR9160.

I do not stuck at Atheros hardware but I stuck at cardbus interface, I 
think USB-cards are worse? If not USB with 802.11n would also be a 
possibility, any ideas which adapters / chipsets I can look for? It 
should be 802.11n able (dual-band not needed) and hostapd should be able 
to work with it.
I searched for the hardware you suggested. I cannot afford a (over) 100$ 
adapter, I found no other cardbus adapter.
I decided upon the list you linked the linksys-card, in my opinion it 
should be marked as maybe broken if it does not work stable, this is 
very disappointing, the card is now three weeks old and it seems to be 
useless for me.

best regards
Alois

[ath9k-devel] kernel panic possibly related to ath9k

[Adrian Chadd]

On 12 September 2010 05:00, MadLoisae at gmx.net <MadLoisae@gmx.net> wrote:

> ?> Anyway, unfortunately there is no real support for 5416 here, since
> ?> it's one of the oldest ath9k hardware around. The situation may
> ?> improve still, but I believe that will mostly be a side-effect of
> ?> other improvements made in the driver.
>
> So it's just luck that the card "works" at is does and I maybe there
> will be never any fix for this problem? Can I do anysth except throwing
> away the card? :-/

What's the problem? (Sorry for not seeing the earlier posts about this.)

I've got an AR5416 in mini-pci form-factor which I have been using to
test that my changes (to FreeBSD) for the AR9100/AR9160 don't break
the older stuff. If that helps, and you can provide me a little detail
to reproduce the problem, I can throw openwrt/ath9k on the thing and
see if I can reproduce whatever problems you're seeing.

Thanks,


Adrian

[ath9k-devel] kernel panic possibly related to ath9k

[MadLoisae at gmx.net]

Hello Adrian,

look here:
https://lists.ath9k.org/pipermail/ath9k-devel/2010-September/003984.html
Actually I cannot reproduce the panic, I do not know what my E72 does 
exactly, but I think it registers / deregisters very often to save 
energy (I saw this in dhcp-log / hostapd-log).
The panic just happens - sometimes 2 or 3 times a day, sometimes it 
needs 3 or 4 days.

best regards
Alois

Adrian Chadd wrote:
> On 12 September 2010 05:00, MadLoisae at gmx.net <MadLoisae@gmx.net> wrote:
>
>   
>>  > Anyway, unfortunately there is no real support for 5416 here, since
>>  > it's one of the oldest ath9k hardware around. The situation may
>>  > improve still, but I believe that will mostly be a side-effect of
>>  > other improvements made in the driver.
>>
>> So it's just luck that the card "works" at is does and I maybe there
>> will be never any fix for this problem? Can I do anysth except throwing
>> away the card? :-/
>>     
>
> What's the problem? (Sorry for not seeing the earlier posts about this.)
>
> I've got an AR5416 in mini-pci form-factor which I have been using to
> test that my changes (to FreeBSD) for the AR9100/AR9160 don't break
> the older stuff. If that helps, and you can provide me a little detail
> to reproduce the problem, I can throw openwrt/ath9k on the thing and
> see if I can reproduce whatever problems you're seeing.
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> Adrian
> _______________________________________________
> ath9k-devel mailing list
> ath9k-devel at lists.ath9k.org
> https://lists.ath9k.org/mailman/listinfo/ath9k-devel
>
>   

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