Comment 112 for bug 1041883

I was seeing this problem with Ubuntu 12.04 booting off SSD (similar to my earlier openSUSE setup).

After a little fiddling around based on the info in this thread (especially about asus_wmi_rfkill_init()) and the asus-wmi.c, I think I've found the problematic module which seems to cause the race condition. It is btusb.

I suspect the issue is more prominently seen when booting off SSD since the asus-wmi and btusb's timing overlap but not that easily when booting off a regular HDD.

To fix the issue on Ubuntu, this is what I did:
echo "blacklist btusb" | sudo tee /etc/blacklist-btusb.conf
echo "/sbin/modprobe btusb" | sudo tee /etc/rc.local

I've just moved insmodding the btusb module from the early modprobe stage to the very last in the rc scripts. In other words you should still have bluetooth working when the GUI starts up.

I rebooted at least 10 times without any issues, and I have almost all the Fn key combinations working (except for Brightness and the keys above space bar). I haven't got this high success rate in booting in the past 1 - 2 months.

BTW, a similar fix also works for my openSUSE bootup (use /etc/rc.d/boot.local instead of /etc/rc.local)

Could others who are having the problem - verify if this at least works around the kernel panics as well as have asus-wmi working ?