rt_ioctl_giwscan log spam removal or fix

[Tim Potter]

Within my dmesg log, I have continuous references like the following:

[134315.948864] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 4(4) BSS returned, data->length = 443
[134395.949568] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 4(4) BSS returned, data->length = 443
[134495.948082] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 5(5) BSS returned, data->length = 591
[134615.949559] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 4(4) BSS returned, data->length = 443
[134735.949344] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 4(4) BSS returned, data->length = 443
[134855.949462] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 4(4) BSS returned, data->length = 443
[134975.948163] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 4(4) BSS returned, data->length = 443

This happens regularly.
uname -a:
Linux tim-eee 2.6.28-11-generic #38-Ubuntu SMP Fri Mar 27 09:00:52 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

and searches bring up that it is found in all major releases. (The relevant source code can be found in

I cannot find anyone that has resolved the problem, but I could not find any known issue with the linux kernel.

Could this be a rt2860 kernel bug?

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
MachineType: ASUSTeK Computer INC. 901
Package: linux-image-2.6.28-11-generic 2.6.28-11.40
ProcCmdLine: root=UUID=e1220961-8bf6-4805-b242-d081dfab5a7e ro splash vga=789
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.28-11.38-generic
SourcePackage: linux

[Philip Muškovac (yofel)]

Since I get the same spam here I'll mark it as confirmed.

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Hi Guys,

I believe this a duplicate of bug 344022 so I am marking it as such. The comments there note the same messages. I imagine you are using WEP encryption and are thus not seeing any network connection issues. Please continue to track this issue at that report. Thanks.

[Tim Potter (musikgoat)]

Leann,

I would have to disagree. I connect with my eee pc to my WPA2 secured home router just fine. I have these messages showing up constantly.

I would like to remove the duplicate status, as these messages, in my opinion, should be dropped from the logs.

[Jon Gjengset (jonhoo)]

I can confirm the problem on Arch linux ( kernel 2.6.29 ) with ra2870.
However I also seem to be getting quite a lot of lines containing only a hash character (#). Anyone else with the same problem?

[Simon Pedersen (svip)]

I have this problem as well, running 2.6.30-02063003-generic on Jaunty but for me there's an actual problem involved.

I suffer from periodic freezes when running PulseAudio over the network, using WEP, and most of these freezes are followed shortly after by
kernel: [ 1556.765208] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 2(2) BSS returned, data->length = 193
or
kernel: [ 956.765821] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 1(1) BSS returned, data->length = 81

[Emilio (emillan)]

For what it's worth, I too have this issue. Despite the spam, my wireless adapter seems to be working fine. I am not using any type of encryption.

[Andy Loughran (andylockran)]

I'm also seeing the same, connecting via WPA2 though and no issues with wireless connection.

[Tim Potter (musikgoat)]

The issue doesn't have anything to do with encryption as people have reported, my assumption is that its a debugging line in the Ralink driver that should be removed.

The issue still exists with the currently up to date Alpha 6 install of Karmic Koala.

[Jason Varney (jason-varever)]

I'm also getting this in my logs and it's not just cosmetic, there seems to be some connectivity loss every time it happens as I get glitches and drop-outs in streaming applications, say Airfoil Speakers specifically. Seems the Ralink code is doing a periodic scan which I'm not sure is a normal behavior.

From /var/log/kern.log;

Oct 25 13:23:29 ubuntu kernel: [358858.630118] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 1(1) BSS returned, data->length = 133

As you can see here this is happing even with very recent staging rt2870 module.

filename: /lib/modules/2.6.32-rc5-rt2870sta-cust02/kernel/drivers/staging/rt2870/rt2870sta.ko
alias: rt3070sta
version: 2.0.1.0
license: GPL
description: RTxx70 Wireless LAN Linux Driver
author: Paul Lin <email address hidden>
staging: Y
vermagic: 2.6.32-rc5-rt2870sta-cust02 SMP mod_unload modversions 586
parm: mac:rt28xx: wireless mac addr (charp)

Running a 5GHz WPA2 AES PSK network on channel 36/5.18GHz - basestation is an Airport Extreme with 7.4.2 firmware and Linksys WUSB600N(rt2870 chipset) USB adapters on the clients (Device ID: 1737:0071) - on Ubuntu specifically.

Official Ralink source (2009_0820_RT2870_Linux_STA_V2.2.0.0) won't build on latest kernels last I tried.

[Mive (miikka-vennola)]

I confirm these glitches and drop-outs and they appear every two minutes.

Oct 27 02:40:48 : [11723.668817] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 1(1) BSS returned, data->length = 116
Oct 27 02:42:48 :[11843.669447] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 1(1) BSS returned, data->length = 116
Oct 27 02:44:48 : [11963.668377] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 1(1) BSS returned, data->length = 116
Oct 27 02:46:48 : [12083.669048] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 1(1) BSS returned, data->length = 116
Oct 27 02:48:48 : [12203.669113] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 1(1) BSS returned, data->length = 116
Oct 27 02:50:48 : [12323.669289] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 1(1) BSS returned, data->length = 116
Oct 27 02:52:48 : [12443.669453] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 1(1) BSS returned, data->length = 116
from /var/log/messages

Using eeebuntu 3.0, Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10 all same.
Same thing with encryption or without.

uname -a
Linux 2.6.29-1-netbook #0array1 SMP Mon Feb 23 15:02:03 MST 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

Asus eeepc 901
[ 5.815414] rt2860sta: module is from the staging directory, the quality is unknown, you have been warned.
[ 5.825138] rt2860 0000:01:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19
from dmesg

[Philip Muškovac (yofel)]

The actual cause for these messages seems to be that the ralink drivers are built with debug mode enabled. Removing -DDBG from the driver Makefile in the kernel source and rebuilding it get's rid of them (at least for the rt2860 that I use here).

[Scott Ritchie (scottritchie)]

That seems like it might be a straightforward fix then

[Jason Varney (jason-varever)]

I've recompiled the rt2870 staging module with -DDBG commented out and yes, the log messages are gone but I'm still experiencing network drop-outs and glitches. Seems the debug actually helps to diagnose the issue and isn't the cause of it.

Log looks like this now...

tail -n 10 /var/log/kern.log
Oct 30 21:46:14 ubuntu kernel: [51770.136972] DeQueueRunning[0]= TRUE!
Oct 30 21:46:16 ubuntu kernel: [51772.530434] DeQueueRunning[0]= TRUE!
Oct 30 21:46:31 ubuntu kernel: [51787.346218] DeQueueRunning[0]= TRUE!
Oct 30 21:47:31 ubuntu kernel: [51847.179966] DeQueueRunning[0]= TRUE!
Oct 30 21:49:06 ubuntu kernel: [51942.425987] DeQueueRunning[0]= TRUE!
Oct 30 21:51:14 ubuntu kernel: [52070.299309] DeQueueRunning[0]= TRUE!
Oct 30 21:53:49 ubuntu kernel: [52225.336546] DeQueueRunning[0]= TRUE!
Oct 30 21:53:53 ubuntu kernel: [52229.645755] DeQueueRunning[0]= TRUE!
Oct 30 21:53:55 ubuntu kernel: [52231.312936] DeQueueRunning[0]= TRUE!
Oct 30 21:53:58 ubuntu kernel: [52233.810652] DeQueueRunning[0]= TRUE!

Actually these entries were there before but now the "rt_ioctl_giwscan" debug messages are gone of course.

[Philip Muškovac (yofel)]

Yes, this will only remove the debug output. Regarding the network dropouts: I don't have any if I'm pretty close to the AP, only when I get farther away (like another floor) then the network drops randomly and the connection is permanently lost when I close my netbook lid. But that should be discussed in a different bug report.

[Tim Potter (musikgoat)]

I agree, this bug report was simply to drop the log references from
normal functioning systems. Debug log info should only be enabled
upon request in my opinion. It's more difficult to look for actual
issues on a system when 1/2 of your logs is these status messages.

Regards,
Tim

Sent from my mobile.

[Martijn Kaandorp (m.a.j.w.kaandorp)]

I have to agree with Tim Potter on this issue.
Using Ubuntu Karmic 2.6.31-14-generic on my eee 1000h i see the spam log messages but also experience drops and glitches during network activity with streaming media (video).

I also see random hangs on exit of several programs in which i suspect pulseaudio, but that is another issue.

Can someone confirm on all this?

grtz,

Marty

[Martijn Kaandorp (m.a.j.w.kaandorp)]

The glitches i mentioned earlier occur every 2 minutes, so do the spam messages in kern.log

[Jason Allen (jallen)]

I agree with Martijn and am also seeing this on my Eee PC 1000HA with RaLink RT2860 wireless using WPA2 to my router.

Interestingly, if my wireless connectivity is poor (ie. < approx 65%) I experience the 'lockups' and internet pauses with the connectivity regulsarly fluctuating between 30% and 80% with losses every ~2mins of network/internet connectivity. If I then move closer to my wireless router and have excellent (~95% + connectivity) then I still get the dmesg messages, but not the regular fluctuations in connectivity strength and network/internet loss.

It's as though the rt2860 drivers drops the connection whenever the strength drops below 60%, if only momentarily, and then establishes a new connection.

[Philip Muškovac (yofel)]

Since this bug is only about the debug messages being enabled by default, let's please take the stability discusstion to bug 480477. Thanks.

[abatcher (geens-toon)]

I don't think it should be disabled, because it indicates something is wrong.

DBGPRINT(RT_DEBUG_ERROR ,("===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. %d(%d) BSS returned, data->length = %d\n",i , pAdapter->ScanTab.BssNr, data->length));

Why else would the connection drops for a few seconds ? Besides, it says in the source code "rt_debug_ERROR". If you don't like the messages, maybe fix the bug instead of removing the message ?

[Abraham Smith (adsmith)]

Regarding the underlying dropout bug. When running iwevent, this appears:

14:55:24.657477 ra0 Custom driver event:(RT2860) BSS(ra0) scan completedscan terminate!! Busy!! Enqueue fail!!
14:55:28.006954 ra0 Set Mode:Managed
14:55:28.016155 ra0 Set Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
14:55:28.024792 ra0 New Access Point/Cell address:Not-Associated
14:55:28.530926 ra0 New Access Point/Cell address:Not-Associated
14:55:28.632730 ra0 Association Request IEs:000D7770612E6D6367696C6C2E636101088B160C121824304830260100000FAC020100000FAC040100000FAC010000010050683AF244FCCF25A2EAF1573F660
14:55:28.632802 ra0 New Access Point/Cell address:00:0B:86:8B:4E:E1

[Abraham Smith (adsmith)]

Also, it happens once every 1-2 minutes, regardless of activity.

[Craig (candrews-integralblue)]

In my situation, iwevent does not indicate disconnects/reconnects, but I get this same huge volume of messages in dmesg.
[449203.816051] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 9(9) BSS returned, data->length = 1338
[449323.820103] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 15(15) BSS returned, data->length = 2484
[449443.814379] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 15(15) BSS returned, data->length = 2316
[449563.818063] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 12(12) BSS returned, data->length = 1724
[449683.814254] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 17(17) BSS returned, data->length = 2459
[449803.809710] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 17(17) BSS returned, data->length = 2811
[449923.814747] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 19(19) BSS returned, data->length = 3006

Every 20 seconds exactly (I timed it), the laptop's network connection "pauses" for just a moment, then resumes. This especially affects applications that don't do enough buffering. In my case, I noticed the problem because pulseaudio does not do sufficient buffering to compensate for this pause every 20 seconds, and I get skipping.

Another laptop with an Intel wireless card does not show this 20 second problem, and I tested with both in the same location. Notably, the router is just about 6 feet away from the laptop.

Here's the iwconfig output:
$ iwconfig ra0
ra0 RT2860 Wireless ESSID:"apt" Nickname:"RT2860STA"
          Mode:Managed Frequency=2.417 GHz Access Point: 00:1D:60:54:24:D0
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s
          RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
          Link Quality=100/100 Signal level:-41 dBm Noise level:-71 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

You can't get better than 100/100 link quality, and these problem still occur.

$ uname -a
Linux nantucket 2.6.31-19-generic #56-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jan 28 02:39:34 UTC 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Further info available upon request.

[bbear (kminney)]

Hello, sorry I am late to this discussion but I wanted to report that I also see the same issues being reported here. I have been trying to find the cause for many weeks and was delighted to stumble upon this thread. This problem has been driving me nuts.

I see the same frequent disconnects every couple of minutes, it evidences itself as 2 second pauses when playing AAC audio from my Boxee system. In Wireshark I see TCP Retransmission events every time this happens and in the messages file I see the same rt_ioctl_giwscan messages when it happens.

Strangely, on my Linux box I am able to copy a 3Gb file from my Windows share (smb) using the same wireless connection. It seems as though the problems may be related to the size of the packets.

My system is dual booted, Jaunty 32bit and Karmic 32 bit, I see the problems with both OS's.
I am using a Linksys WUSB600n V2 USB adapter, it has the ralink rt3572 chipset. I have installed the latest rt3572 drivers from the Ralink website (I ran 'make install', etc, i.e. I am not using ndiswrapper)

I followed the instructions in the following launchpad thread to install and set up the rt3572 driver:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/408165

In case anyone is interested, at the above thread I posted my Wireshark results where you can see the TCP Retransmission events occurring.

I am pretty sure this is not a problem with the WUSB600N itself as if I move it to a Windows XP machine and stream the same AAC files it works flawlessly, Obviously the buffering may be different with the Windows app so that may be a factor, although I am using the same Boxee Beta version. Note also that I see the same issues if I use other media players on my Linux box - it is not a Boxee issue in my opinion.

Also I wanted to mention that my setup has the WUSB600N V2 in the same room as my Dlink DIR-825 router, just 10ft apart. The signal strength is 100%. network-manager shows that it is connected at 270Mbps. I am using 5Ghz band, WPA2

If anyone needs me to provide more detail please ask. If there is any way I can help, again please ask. For me, Linux and Wireless just doesn't play well together. This is the show stopper for me at the moment,

thanks

[bbear (kminney)]

I wanted to let everyone know that thanks for someone who posted to the Ubuntu forums, I now seem to have a solution for the problem with loosing the network connection for a second or so every two minutes. The solution was to ditch gnome-network-manager and switch to using wicd ..

sudo apt-get install wicd

I found the suggestion on the Ubuntu forums at the following link:

http://ubuntuforums.org/printthread.php?t=1309517

Note that I still see the 'spam' rt_ioctl_giwscan messages in the log files but the actual network dropping seems to have been fixed.

[Liam Bedford (lbedford-deactivatedaccount)]

This is still in lucid:
Linux nas.lbedford.org 2.6.32-19-generic #28-Ubuntu SMP Wed Mar 31 17:46:20 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux
extract from dmesg:
[92136.520899] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 3(3) BSS returned, data->length = 412
[92196.524034] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 2(2) BSS returned, data->length = 310
[92256.520459] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 2(2) BSS returned, data->length = 310
[92316.520305] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 3(3) BSS returned, data->length = 412
[92376.520600] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 4(4) BSS returned, data->length = 548

lspci for the device:
04:00.0 0280: 1814:0781

Note I'm not using this connection at all. I'm getting these messages and traffic even
though the device shouldn't be up and doesn't have an IP address.

[Forest (foresto)]

It still shows up in Lucid beta 2 on my Asus Eee PC 1000HE netbook. It's a bit more than an annoyance, as I'm trying to minimize the disk use on this machine for the sake of battery life, and this message continually being logged makes that difficult.

[chris_c (c-camacho)]

I can confirm that commenting -DDBG from config.mk when compiling the kernel module stops the log spamming

[James Walker (jamesjoseph-walker)]

A discussion of the problem and a working fix can be found here:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/373680

Thanks to Wagner Volanin.

[Philip Muškovac (yofel)]

Seems right, as I recently found out that I don't get this messages when I use wpa_supplicant without network-manager running.

[aanno (thomas-pasch)]

Still got this issue with 2.6.32-23-generic on lucid. But network-manager bug mentioned above claims to be solved with this kernel. Is that really the whole story???

[SpiderTex (spider-tex)]

Is this realy a duplicate to bug #373680

I'm on kernel 2.6.32-24-generic and still experience the same problem

My log is filled with
rt_ioctl_giwscan. 2(2) BSS returned, data->length = 371
exactly every 2 minutes.

I had this before with ralink drivers rt3572sta v2.3.0.0, and I still have it with v2.4.0.1

had to remove the -DDBG option in the make file to get rid of the messages.

I'm running stable 802.11N network with SSID broadcast off, WPA2 on.

[tim71 (from-kentta)]

I found some weird "coincidence" - I have this same log spamming every few seconds, but only when I run Opera browser. It does not even relate to browsing itself, because it starts even after opening empty Opera window.

The problem is that I do not know, can this be related to Opera or something else - that's why I am posting this here. If anyone can find out, that it is not related to drivers or other part of the system itself, then it is of course the problem of the browser and its developers, as it is closed source product. Anyway I just thought maybe it can be useful to know for someone.

[tim71 (from-kentta)]

forgot the link

http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=677832

[Enrico Battocchi (lopo)]

I agree with some users above, it's not a duplicate bug.
I'm on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx with kernel 2.6.34-020634-generic on an Asus EeePC 1000H, wi-fi did not work out of the box so I had to recompile RT2860 drivers from Ralink sources (version 2.4.0.0 from their website): my dmesg got "spammed" with "rt_ioctl_giwscan" messages, but no problem with wi-fi connection.
I commented out -DDBG flag from config.mk and compiled it again, now the messages are gone.

The issue is definitely that flag, I think it should be disabled: if there are performance/connection problems, error messages should appear regardless of debug messages enabling, shouldn't they?

[L3ttuce (ifearx)]

I don't know what exactly causes this, but networking has been acting strange lately, and I notice that with the rt2860sta module loaded, system load averages remain above 1, often creeping up to 3 where they always used to be below 1. Also, I get the ioctl_giwscan message a LOT more frequently: once every second. I'm on Karmic, kernel 2.6.31-22-generic. It does not seem to matter if I use stock module, or recompile the rt2860sta. The messages, of course, disappear when disabling debugging output to logs, but the load problem (which I suspect is due to the network issues) remains.

[Dawid Toton (d0)]

My logs are also littered with the "BSS returned" messages too much.
I have installed linux-backports-modules-compat-wireless-2.6.34-2.6.32-34-generic

The debug noise should be removed. It's really different problem than #373680.

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[Vaishnavi (vaishnaviyv)]

Hi all, I know its 5 years since this bug was reported. I still face the issue with Natty Narwhal, Ubuntu 11.04. Is bug the reason for the wireless network connectivity to be lost every few seconds ? My laptops keep disconnecting from the network every few seconds. Any suggestions on how to fix the issue would be really helpful . Thanks !