Re: iwlagn: associating with AP causes kernel hiccup

["Andrew Lutomirski" <luto@myrealbox.com>]

On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 6:12 PM, Tomas Winkler <tomasw@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 5:18 PM, Andy Lutomirski <luto@myrealbox.com> wrote:
>> Richard Scherping wrote:
>>>
>>> Tomas Winkler schrieb:
>
>>
>> Amen.
> Stable doesn't mean all components are stable, citation  from Linus blog:
> "It doesn't have to be perfect (and obviously no release ever is), but
> it needs to be in reasonable shape"
>
> The fact is that some critical patches were rejected as not
> regressions in rc cycle and probably need to be pushed to the stable
> version now or distribution will merge them.
> We gave more priority for testing 32 bit version so it is more stable
> then 64 bit which got much less in house testing and we've missed many
> issues there. The driver doesn't get full exposure till it's get to
> the public in stable version therefore  no bugs are opened in the rc
> cycle so also are not fixed in the stable version. and unfortunately
> there is no much system testing at all for what get's into merging
> window.
> Second the whole mac80211 stack didn't address fully MQ rewrite so
> it's a bit shaky as well and this will be fact also in 2.6.28.

OK.

>
> This driver has been available and more-or-less working for ages.
>> What kernel am I supposed to run if I just want a stable system? Haven't
>> found one yet, other than distro kernels...
>>
>> In any case, I've seen these complete system hiccups with iwl4965 and iwlagn
>> since at least 2.6.25 and through quite a few wireless-testing versions.  I
>> bet that this, along with things like it, is the culprit:
>
> Haven't seen you've filled bug for it.

Fair enough.  #1790.

>
> Locking need to be really revised but till now I didn't see show
> stoppers issues so it didn't get priority
>
>> Would I be out of line for wishing the iwlwifi developers
> Patches are always welcome

I can write a patch to add a mutex and change it to:

take mutex
grab_nic
spinlock

but I bet that would break all kinds of things. :)

--Andy