Re: Kernel hang on i386 running 6.1.3

[christos%astron.com@localhost (Christos Zoulas)]

In article <132555B8-5D4A-4715-83CB-AF16959DFEF0%mac.com@localhost>,
Bob Nestor  <rnestor%mac.com@localhost> wrote:
>I'm not sure this is a bug, but I've been seeing the kernel hang on my
>i386 system running 6.1.3.  I've isolated it to the hostapd setup.  My
>system has a D-Link AirPlus XtremeG DWL-G520 wireless card with H/W
>version A3 and F/W version 2.36.
>
>I noticed some traffic a year or so ago that someone was reporting
>similar problems with an atheros device on 6.0, but never saw a
>resolution.
>
>The ath man page indicates that the A1 version of the AR5212 card isn't
>supported and I assume that's referring to the H/W version.  My card
>does run outside of the kernel hangs, although it spits out the "device
>timeout" message.  This also happens on a DWA-556 card running on an
>amd64 system but these messages don't appear to seriously impact use of
>the systems.
>
>What I've finally isolated things down to is the WEP/WPA/WPA2 setup. 
>All three modes do work, but setting the "wpa=3" parameter in the
>hostapd.conf file causes the kernel to hang solid within about 2 hours. 
>Sometimes the hang occurs while booting, sometimes the system runs fine
>for up to 2 hours before hanging.  In all cases this is without any
>active network connections on the wireless interface.
>
>Setting the parameter to "wpa=1" for WPA or setting it to "wpa=2" for
>WPA2 both work fine and the system is able to stay up and running for
>over 12 hours.  But setting it to "3" for both WPA and WPA2 causes the
>hang. Not using any hostapd setup I believe defaults to WEP and that
>also works just fine.
>
>Using the "wpa=3" on an amd64 system running 5.1 with the D-Link DWA-556
>doesn't cause a problem.
>
>If someone thinks this is really a bug and would like me to run tests
>I'd be happy to.  Although so far I've never been able to get a dump or
>get into the kernel debugger.

Are you running out of memory? Is there a leak perhaps in the kernel?

christos