Bug#345647: madwifi driver causes kernel oops

[Kel Modderman]

Graham wrote:

>Package: madwifi-source
>Version: 20051111
>
>I've built the module against the Debian "official" kernel
>2.6.14-2-686 (version 2.6.14-7).
>
>I have a ThinkPad A22p and an Enterasys Networks PCMCIA a/b/g card. I
>will attach the output of "lspci -vvv".
>
>When I click "scan for networks" in kwifimanager, kwifimanager
>crashes, and dmesg shows this:
>  
>
How about when using the wireless tools from commandline for scanning? 
Does this also cause instability?

>Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address 0000ffff
> printing eip:
>e0aa9fff
>*pde = 00000000
>Oops: 0000 [#1]
>Modules linked in: r128 drm ipv6 thermal fan button processor ac
>battery nls_iso8859_1 nls_cp437 vfat fat ath_pci ath_rate_onoe wlan
>ath_hal joydev snd_cs46xx gameport snd_rawmidi snd_seq_device
>snd_ac97_codec snd_ac97_bus irtty_sir snd_pcm_oss snd_mixer_oss
>sir_dev uhci_hcd snd_pcm irda i2c_piix4 ide_cd cdrom psmouse snd_timer
>crc_ccitt floppy e100 mii yenta_socket rsrc_nonstatic pcmcia_core
>usbcore serio_raw snd soundcore snd_page_alloc pci_hotplug parport_pc
>parport intel_agp agpgart pcspkr i2c_core rtc ext3 jbd mbcache
>ide_disk generic ide_generic piix ide_core evdev mousedev
>CPU:    0
>EIP:    0060:[<e0aa9fff>]    Tainted: P      VLI
>EFLAGS: 00010246   (2.6.14-2-686)
>EIP is at read_ap_result+0x1bf/0x580 [wlan]
>eax: 0000ffff   ebx: da2b5e9c   ecx: 00000000   edx: de0f8c00
>esi: de0f8cf5   edi: d839401c   ebp: d839401c   esp: da2b5d84
>ds: 007b   es: 007b   ss: 0068
>Process kwifimanager (pid: 3795, threadinfo=da2b4000 task=da12a030)
>Stack: 00000292 d5da12b0 da2b5db0 00000292 da274998 00000001 de144678 d8395000
>       00000000 da6c7e20 d5da1280 d5da1280 c02c4b64 00000000 00000001 00000000
>       da6c7e20 00000296 da6c7e20 00000000 d5da1280 00000000 d5da12b0 c025d452
>Call Trace:
> [<c02c4b64>] unix_write_space+0x34/0x70
> [<c025d452>] kfree_skbmem+0x42/0xa0
> [<c02c710d>] unix_stream_recvmsg+0x1ed/0x480
> [<e0aa4a36>] ieee80211_iterate_nodes+0x46/0x80 [wlan]
> [<e0aabe48>] ieee80211_ioctl_giwscan+0x68/0xc0 [wlan]
> [<e0aa9e40>] read_ap_result+0x0/0x580 [wlan]
> [<c026fc18>] wireless_process_ioctl+0x668/0x7d0
> [<e0b0bfa0>] ath_ioctl_giwscan+0x0/0x20 [ath_pci]
> [<c02649bd>] dev_ioctl+0x27d/0x2e0
> [<c01731b2>] do_ioctl+0x32/0x90
> [<c0173370>] vfs_ioctl+0x60/0x1e0
> [<c0173578>] sys_ioctl+0x88/0xa0
> [<c01030c5>] syscall_call+0x7/0xb
>Code: 8b 43 04 89 42 04 89 ca 8b 84 24 dc 00 00 00 89 50 10 c7 03 00
>00 00 00 66 c7 43 02 05 8b 8b 94 24 e0 00 00 00 8b 82 28 01 00 00 <0f>
>b7 00 66 c7 43 08 01 00 69 c0 a0 86 01 00 89 43 04 8b 8c 24
>
>
>Any ideas?
>
>Thanks
>
>-- graham
>  
>
It may be related to the inability of this module to do background 
scanning, or it could just be a plain old bug in the code. Try using the 
basic wireless-tools and refrain from using the graphical apps, and see 
if you can reproduce this instability.

This version of the driver is the most stable offering from the madwifi 
project however it is still tagged as beta code, so it is known to cause 
instability on some hardware.

Thanks, Kel.