PHY TRANSMISSION ERRORS

PHY TRANSMISSION ERRORS

[Larry Finger]

I recently switched from a BCM4312/1 to a BCM4311/2 PCIe card. Running 
the latest from wireless-testing, I began seeing the PHY TRANSMISSION 
ERROR storms. None had ever been seen for the BCM4312/1. Since booting 
2.6.26 from wireless-testing, none have been observed.

Is this a regression since 2.6.26, or are these errors really 
intermittent? If you see these, please tell me how frequently they 
occur, and as much about the behavior with kernel version as you know.

Thanks,

Larry

PHY transmission errors

[Larry Finger]

In https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=70031, there is a report of a 
regression in 3.14-rc1 for a 14e4:4331 device. Kernel 3.13 is OK. Can anyone 
with a 4331 confirm that PHY transmission errors are a lot more prevalent with 
either mainline 3.14-rc1 or the current wireless-testing than with 3.13?

I do not have that particular device, but I do not see any changes for my 
14e4:4315; however, the 4331 has a different PHY than does the 4315.

A review of the commits between 3.13 and 3.14-rc1 shows nothing for bcma that 
should cause this effect. For b43, the only one that might cause this is commit 
64e5acb entitled "b43: fix the wrong assignment of status.freq in b43_rx()". 
That was clearly a bug and it fixed thing for my system, but we must consider if 
that bug was also masking some other problem that is now revealed.

I have asked the bug reporter at b.k.o if it is possible to bisect the problem.

Larry