[Bug?] Machine hangs, rtl8192se possible cause

[Bug?] Machine hangs, rtl8192se possible cause

[Jaroslaw Fedewicz]

Hello,

I own a Thinkpad Edge 13 (AMD, machine type 0197) laptop, which is
shipped with a Realtek 8192 SE WLAN card.

The WLAN support with this particular card was never brilliant under
Linux, first with (very) flakey drivers from Realtek which would stop
transmitting packets every so often or panic after a few hours of
usage. The in-tree drivers are better in this respect, but I'm
experiencing mysterious hangups every once in a while. The machine is
effectively dead and has to be power-cycled — no oops, no kernel
panic, no nothing, it just hangs and that's it.

I'm sure this is not a regression because the hangups were right there
from the start.

The last meaningful message which might be helpful was: "wait for
BIT(6) return value X" (I don't remember what X was, it was a while
ago and only once).

I don't know if there are other means to debug (netconsole over eth0?)
those hangs. The only other thing I know for sure that I can get a
week long uptime if I blacklist rtl8192se.ko from loading.

If I can provide any additional information to track the bug (or a
faulty piece of hardware?) down, please tell me. Google tells me
nobody reported this before, or it was just me feeding incorrect
keywords.

Thanks for your kind attention.

P. S. Tried netconsole before, got nothing to pinpoint the error. The
only recurring pattern I could see in it was that almost every time
the machine hanged was after ip6tables initialized, at least it was
the last message in the log.

P. P. S. I don't track netdev@ and linux-wireless@ lists, so please Cc: me.

Re: [Bug?] Machine hangs, rtl8192se possible cause

[Larry Finger]

On 08/01/2011 08:26 AM, Jaroslaw Fedewicz wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I own a Thinkpad Edge 13 (AMD, machine type 0197) laptop, which is
> shipped with a Realtek 8192 SE WLAN card.
>
> The WLAN support with this particular card was never brilliant under
> Linux, first with (very) flakey drivers from Realtek which would stop
> transmitting packets every so often or panic after a few hours of
> usage. The in-tree drivers are better in this respect, but I'm
> experiencing mysterious hangups every once in a while. The machine is
> effectively dead and has to be power-cycled — no oops, no kernel
> panic, no nothing, it just hangs and that's it.
>
> I'm sure this is not a regression because the hangups were right there
> from the start.
>
> The last meaningful message which might be helpful was: "wait for
> BIT(6) return value X" (I don't remember what X was, it was a while
> ago and only once).
>
> I don't know if there are other means to debug (netconsole over eth0?)
> those hangs. The only other thing I know for sure that I can get a
> week long uptime if I blacklist rtl8192se.ko from loading.
>
> If I can provide any additional information to track the bug (or a
> faulty piece of hardware?) down, please tell me. Google tells me
> nobody reported this before, or it was just me feeding incorrect
> keywords.
>
> Thanks for your kind attention.
>
> P. S. Tried netconsole before, got nothing to pinpoint the error. The
> only recurring pattern I could see in it was that almost every time
> the machine hanged was after ip6tables initialized, at least it was
> the last message in the log.
>
> P. P. S. I don't track netdev@ and linux-wireless@ lists, so please Cc: me.

What kernel are you using? The only problems I've had were some kernel panics 
due to improper handling of memory allocation failures with the receive skb's, 
but they have been fixed.

It can be difficult to use netconsole to debug problems with wireless devices.

As you prevent rtl8192se from loading automatically, the logging console may 
provide some clues. Use the following command to load the driver:

sleep 10 ; modprobe rtl8192se

During the 10 second sleep, use CTRL-ALT-F10 to switch consoles and see if any 
messages appear.

Please use 'lspci -nn' to determine which version of the card you have.

Thanks,

Larry

Re: [Bug?] Machine hangs, rtl8192se possible cause

[Jaroslaw Fedewicz]

> What kernel are you using? The only problems I've had were some kernel
> panics due to improper handling of memory allocation failures with the
> receive skb's, but they have been fixed.
>

I'm using a fairly recent version of kernel from git (I think from
before yesterday). The mysterious hangs were there from the beginning,
but it also might be partly because ATI driver was messed up too at
these times. Later, ati appeared fixed but the hangs wouldn't go away.

I don't think it's a panic proper, though. Nothing ever gets logged
along the lines of "panic". Even if I happen to have a text mode
console, it just freezes. If I have a panic or an oops proper, I'm
also kicked out of X11 to see it by the KMS. But not in this case.

(Also, the laptop has neither Caps Lock nor Num Lock nor Scroll Lock
LEDs, so I can't see if they blink.)

What raised my suspicions is that I've never seen this happen when
rtl8192se wasn't compiled at all or was not loaded.

> It can be difficult to use netconsole to debug problems with wireless
> devices.

I can hook netconsole to the Ethernet and it *might* manage to log the
last packet (at least I used to reason that way when screen just
froze). The trick is, it never did log anything spurious. Just your
normal initialization messages and then it just stops.

>
> As you prevent rtl8192se from loading automatically, the logging console may
> provide some clues. Use the following command to load the driver:
>
> sleep 10 ; modprobe rtl8192se
>
> During the 10 second sleep, use CTRL-ALT-F10 to switch consoles and see if
> any messages appear.
>

The most problematic thing is that it does not hang right away. Most
of the time, I see the machine go into the catatonia after quite a
while, and as it is not the laptop I do most of my work on, I usually
see it hanged when screen PM has already kicked in. So I cannot really
read what the log might say on the matter.

I cannot also trigger the freeze reliably. Most of the time it happens
"when you are not looking at it", and it usually happens either during
or just after high load averages and low to none network activity (a
typical scenario: build a firefox from sources, go outside, come home
4 hours later, the laptop is turned on but dead by hanging; no
messages as the screen is obviously off; a less typical scenario is to
freeze during startup).

I'm the last person ever to suggest anything on the subject, but could
it be a problem in the card's power management?

> Please use 'lspci -nn' to determine which version of the card you have.

03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
RTL8191SEvB Wireless LAN Controller [10ec:8172] (rev 10)

If there is a test I can conduct or any other information to provide,
please let me know.

Re: [Bug?] Machine hangs, rtl8192se possible cause

[Larry Finger]

On 08/01/2011 06:10 PM, Jaroslaw Fedewicz wrote:
>
> I'm using a fairly recent version of kernel from git (I think from
> before yesterday). The mysterious hangs were there from the beginning,
> but it also might be partly because ATI driver was messed up too at
> these times. Later, ati appeared fixed but the hangs wouldn't go away.

If that git tree is linux-2.6, or its new name, from Linus, then you have the 
latest source.

> I don't think it's a panic proper, though. Nothing ever gets logged
> along the lines of "panic". Even if I happen to have a text mode
> console, it just freezes. If I have a panic or an oops proper, I'm
> also kicked out of X11 to see it by the KMS. But not in this case.
>
> (Also, the laptop has neither Caps Lock nor Num Lock nor Scroll Lock
> LEDs, so I can't see if they blink.)

A kernel panic never logs anything to the disk. The only place you will see it 
is on the logging console, or in netconsole output.

> What raised my suspicions is that I've never seen this happen when
> rtl8192se wasn't compiled at all or was not loaded.
>
> The most problematic thing is that it does not hang right away. Most
> of the time, I see the machine go into the catatonia after quite a
> while, and as it is not the laptop I do most of my work on, I usually
> see it hanged when screen PM has already kicked in. So I cannot really
> read what the log might say on the matter.
>
> I cannot also trigger the freeze reliably. Most of the time it happens
> "when you are not looking at it", and it usually happens either during
> or just after high load averages and low to none network activity (a
> typical scenario: build a firefox from sources, go outside, come home
> 4 hours later, the laptop is turned on but dead by hanging; no
> messages as the screen is obviously off; a less typical scenario is to
> freeze during startup).
>
> I'm the last person ever to suggest anything on the subject, but could
> it be a problem in the card's power management?

Not likely. I have three different cards with differing configurations that I 
have run for extended periods without seeing your problem. One of them is the 
same as yours.

Until you get some kind of dump from the system, I'm not sure what can be done.

Larry

Re: [Bug?] Machine hangs, rtl8192se possible cause

[Edwin]

Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@...> writes:

> 
> On 08/01/2011 06:10 PM, Jaroslaw Fedewicz wrote:
> >
> > I'm using a fairly recent version of kernel from git (I think from
> > before yesterday). The mysterious hangs were there from the beginning,
> > but it also might be partly because ATI driver was messed up too at
> > these times. Later, ati appeared fixed but the hangs wouldn't go away.
> 
> If that git tree is linux-2.6, or its new name, from Linus, then you have the 
> latest source.
> 
> > I don't think it's a panic proper, though. Nothing ever gets logged
> > along the lines of "panic". Even if I happen to have a text mode
> > console, it just freezes. If I have a panic or an oops proper, I'm
> > also kicked out of X11 to see it by the KMS. But not in this case.
> >
> > (Also, the laptop has neither Caps Lock nor Num Lock nor Scroll Lock
> > LEDs, so I can't see if they blink.)
> 
> A kernel panic never logs anything to the disk. The only place you will see it 
> is on the logging console, or in netconsole output.
> 
> > What raised my suspicions is that I've never seen this happen when
> > rtl8192se wasn't compiled at all or was not loaded.
> >
> > The most problematic thing is that it does not hang right away. Most
> > of the time, I see the machine go into the catatonia after quite a
> > while, and as it is not the laptop I do most of my work on, I usually
> > see it hanged when screen PM has already kicked in. So I cannot really
> > read what the log might say on the matter.
> >
> > I cannot also trigger the freeze reliably. Most of the time it happens
> > "when you are not looking at it", and it usually happens either during
> > or just after high load averages and low to none network activity (a
> > typical scenario: build a firefox from sources, go outside, come home
> > 4 hours later, the laptop is turned on but dead by hanging; no
> > messages as the screen is obviously off; a less typical scenario is to
> > freeze during startup).
> >
> > I'm the last person ever to suggest anything on the subject, but could
> > it be a problem in the card's power management?
> 
> Not likely. I have three different cards with differing configurations that I 
> have run for extended periods without seeing your problem. One of them is the 
> same as yours.
> 
> Until you get some kind of dump from the system, I'm not sure what can be done.
> 
> Larry
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> 
> 

Hi,

Did you ever find any solution to this issue? Because I got very similar
problems with my laptop, which is the same as Fedewicz'.

Although the issues started to appear after I upgraded from kernel 2.6.something
to kernel 3.0.4-1. Before that I only had issues causing the laptop to freeze
after resuming form suspend or hibernation, if the rtl8192se module wasn't
unloaded before issuing pm-suspend.

I might add that the freezes have just occurred when I'm on my school's network,
using WPA2 with PEAP and MSCHAPv2. I have yet to see it freeze when connected to
a unsecured network, but that might just be an coincidence.

I don't know if I'm able to get any dumps. And I can't try to do a magic sysrq
either, as the laptop is missing the SysRq-key...

Regards,
Edwin

Re: [Bug?] Machine hangs, rtl8192se possible cause

[Larry Finger]

On 09/22/2011 11:06 AM, Edwin wrote:
>
> Did you ever find any solution to this issue? Because I got very similar
> problems with my laptop, which is the same as Fedewicz'.
>
> Although the issues started to appear after I upgraded from kernel 2.6.something
> to kernel 3.0.4-1. Before that I only had issues causing the laptop to freeze
> after resuming form suspend or hibernation, if the rtl8192se module wasn't
> unloaded before issuing pm-suspend.
>
> I might add that the freezes have just occurred when I'm on my school's network,
> using WPA2 with PEAP and MSCHAPv2. I have yet to see it freeze when connected to
> a unsecured network, but that might just be an coincidence.
>
> I don't know if I'm able to get any dumps. And I can't try to do a magic sysrq
> either, as the laptop is missing the SysRq-key...

No, I have nothing further. These freezes do not happen here and no one has 
submitted any traceback information.

Please try the following sequence:

modprobe -rv rtl8192se
modprobe -v rfl8192se ips=0

That will disable power save, which might be a cause of the problem.

Larry