Wireless-LAN will freeze both screen & mouse pointer

[Stefan Kull]

SYMPTOMS:
When using Wireless-LAN...
- Screen and mouse become frozen
- Caps_lock BLINKING
- Scroll_lock BLINKING
...only way out is to reboot by unplugging batteries and power adapter.

The problem appears after 1-20minutes using the wireless adapter in my notebook.
Example 1: Having a terminal running "sudo apt-get install kde4", running for about 1-2 minutes before system freeze and LED starts blinking.

Example 2: Only having FireFox 3 Beta 4 running with 5 tabs, and when adding the next tab the system will freeze and LED starts blinking.

Observation: As long as I do not load the wireless LAN I can work for hours, but as soon as I run into “heavy web pages” the system will normally crash!

Observation: My Notebook is OK as long as I use the built in cable-LAN adapter.

MY NOTEBOOK
- Dell Latitude C810 (1GHz PIII, 512MB)......I have run memory-check without any errors.
- D-Link System Inc DWL-G630 Rev E (wireless pc-card adapter)
  (RaLink RT2561/RT61 rev B 802.11g)
- Ubuntu 8.04 Beta (2.6.24-14-generic) using both Gnome and KDE4
...for more information, please look into attached .log files.

I was asked to create a new bug-report.
The following similar bug reports seems to pointing at the same problem.
Bug #205653 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/205653
Bug #194650 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/194650
...feel free to classify this bug report as an duplicate.

Regards
Skull

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat Apr 12 19:20:08 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
Package: firefox-3.0 3.0~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=sv_SE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-14-generic i686

[michele (mikj)]

Ciao :)

  Me too.
  Acer wlmi1524, wireless card ipn2220 (it does not work after I upgraded from gusty to hardy alpha6 kubuntu, see the 205000 bug) and a pcmcia card ralink rt2600 mimo ...

Linux 2.6.24-15-generic amd64

mikj

[Stefan Kull (stefan-kull)]

This issue/bug/problem remains in the released 8.04 using 2.6.24-19-generic.

Here is the latest report i found at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=832383

Severity: High (freeze/crash)
Impact: High (I can NOT use wlan at all!)

[Stefan Kull (stefan-kull)]

An updated list of similar bugreports that seems to pointing at the same symptoms when using Wireless-LAN...

List of symptoms:
    * Screen and mouse become frozen
    * Caps Lock LED BLINKING
    * Scroll Lock LED BLINKING
    * ...only way out is to reboot by unplugging batteries and power adapter.
    * My notebook is OK as long as I use the built in cable-LAN adapter.

List of earlier reported bugs with similar symptoms
Bug #220013: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/hardy/+source/linux/+bug/220013
                        "[hardy] Kernel panic with Zydas wifi and kernel 2.6.24"

Bug #205653: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ux/+bug/205653
                        "Hardy beta - laptop randomly freezes with caps & scroll lock led's blinking"

Bug #194650: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ux/+bug/194650
                        "computer locks up using rt61pci"

Bug #152102: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/152102
                        "Belkin F5D6001 Freezing Ubuntu 7.10 RC1"

Pleeease ;-( could someone look into this issue?

  * Severity: High => Makes system hang/crash
  * Impact: High => I can NOT use wlan at all!

[Jonathan Poole (jfpoolio)]

I have two HP laptops with:

AMD turion x2 64-bit
broadcom wireless adapters
etc.

uname-a for both laptops:
2.6.24-21-generic #1 SMP Tue Oct 21 23:43:45 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

Both systems freeze and I am sure the freezes are related to wireless. Either of the laptops will freeze when idle, reconnecting after dropping the connection (frequent cause) but haven't yet crashed while I am frequently using a strong connection. I do have other wireless issues and can't connect to some access points which causes the frequent reconnect attempts that often lead to the blinking cursor. The laptops will also crash when connected to access points that may work for many hours at a time without issue though. Upon freeze the caps-lock blinks and that is it.

the dv2000 has the bcm4312 802.11 a/b/g adapter running the wl driver
the dv9700 has the bcm4322 802.11 a/b/g/n adapter running the wl driver

Both of these installs are clean and stock with no mods outside of running the updates and adding a few programs. I'll be glad to provide additional information or post differently.

[Jonathan Poole (jfpoolio)]

I also meant to add that the dv2000 was previously running 7.04 without this or any other crashing issue.

Thanks,

Jonathan Poole

[kenden (kenden)]

I had the same problem on Ubuntu 8.04.
After upgrade to Ubuntu 8.10, the problem is gone.

[Stefan Kull (stefan-kull)]

I can confirm that this problem seem to be solved in 8.10.
After upgrading from 8.04 to 8.10 on the same hardware I can now use my D-Link System Inc DWL-G630 Rev E (wireless pc-card adapter) without any problem...

[Manoj Iyer (manjo)]

Since this bug seems to be fixed in 8.10, I am marking the bug as fix released.

[a09uj (giyuaasd)]

I'm experiencing a similar issue with Ubuntu 8.10

This weird behavior started a couple of days ago. Before everything worked fine: I could configure my Wireless adapter with iwconfig, access wireless networks and so on.

System information:
* Notebook vendor and model: HP-Compaq 6735s
* Operating System: Ubuntu 8.10, Linux 2.6.27-15-generic #1 SMP i686 GNU/Linux
* WLAN device:
 (from dmsesg | grep -i wireless) eth1: Broadcom BCM4315 802.11 Wireless Controller 5.10.91.9
 (from lspci | grep -i broadcom) Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev ff)

I'm using the patched version of Broadcom drivers, if I remeber well I used this guide to make my Wireless adapter to (barely) work: http://jomcode.com/fadhil/?p=59

I attach the output of lsmod, lspci and dmesg for major details that I could have omitted.

[a09uj (giyuaasd)]

Just forgot to say:
if I invoke iwconfing, install a package related to the wireless adapter (e.g. wifi-radar, wavemon) the computer freezes instantly and the only thing I can do is to unplug or press the power button for 4 secs.

My caps-lock key doesn't blink on freeze.

This issue started when I tried to setup a Ad-Hoc network on my notebook for sharing the internet connection with my room-mate.

LAN (eth0) «» Ubuntu (with tcp forwarding, dnsmasq) «» WLAN (eth1)

I thought I could attach more than one file per comment. I merged all the files on one and attached it to this comment.