Complete system freeze or instability in some wifi environments

[Randall Ross]

Condition:
The system is connected to a wireless network (wifi LAN) and is actively using that network. (i.e. authenticated under WPA or WEP if necessary and traffic is flowing in/out of the network interface.)

Symptoms:
1. The system will completely freeze (with disk activity light on solid.)
2. The system will randomly disconnect from the network. Network manager is unable to re-establish connectivity automatically, but can be manually stopped and restarted from the command line which is 80% effective.
3. The system will become very sluggish to the point of being unusable. System feels like it is waiting for resources.

Possible Correlations Noted:
a) Wireless LAN's with high traffic levels seem to invoke the symptoms
b) Heavy usage (e.g. multiple simultaneous downloads, bittorrent, etc.) seem to invoke the symptoms
c) Wireless LAN's that are starved for WAN bandwidth upstream seem to invoke the symptoms.

Other Notes:
i) It was hard to track down this bug due to it's apparent dependency on network conditions which vary from location to location. Some locations cause the system to freeze several times per hour. Others cause only slowdowns or random disconnections.
ii) I have a suspicion that the bug is somehow related to the wireless drivers or their interaction with the kernel. I am suspicious of the ISL3886 driver. Why is it being loaded rather than the ISL3890?

Affects:
Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope (and Intrepid Ibex 8.10, which I no longer use).

Environment:

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 9.04
Release: 9.04

$ uname -a
Linux mobile904beta 2.6.28-12-generic #43-Ubuntu SMP Fri May 1 19:27:06 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

$ lspci -vvnn
## relevant output only
00:06.0 Network controller [0280]: Intersil Corporation ISL3890 [Prism GT/Prism Duette]/ISL3886 [Prism Javelin/Prism Xbow] [1260:3890] (rev 01)
 Subsystem: AMBIT Microsystem Corp. Device [1468:0210]
 Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV+ VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx-
 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx+
 Latency: 80 (2500ns min, 7000ns max), Cache Line Size: 32 bytes
 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 7
 Region 0: Memory at e8000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: p54pci
 Kernel modules: p54pci, prism54

$ lsmod
## relevant output only
Module Size Used by
p54pci 17280 0
p54common 23680 1 p54pci
mac80211 217464 2 p54pci,p54common
cfg80211 38288 1 mac80211

$ dmesg
## relevant output only): ** by the way, this is an old Sharp MM20 system. look at the boot timestamps!!
##... (stuff deleted)
[ 29.707701] p54pci 0000:00:06.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LNKD] -> GSI 7 (level, low) -> IRQ 7
[ 29.708417] p54pci 0000:00:06.0: firmware: requesting isl3886
##... (stuff deleted)
[ 32.098957] cfg80211: World regulatory domain updated:
[ 32.098977] (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp)
[ 32.098989] (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[ 32.098999] (2457000 KHz - 2482000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[ 32.099007] (2474000 KHz - 2494000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[ 32.099017] (5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[ 32.099026] (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[ 32.393870] p54: LM86 firmware
[ 32.393899] p54: FW rev 2.7.0.0 - Softmac protocol 4.1
[ 32.554202] pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0x100-0x3af: clean.
[ 32.559290] pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0x3e0-0x4ff: clean.
[ 32.560527] pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0x820-0x8ff: clean.
[ 32.561528] pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0xc00-0xcf7: clean.
[ 32.564313] pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0xa00-0xaff: clean.
[ 33.271293] p54: unknown eeprom code : 0x1
[ 33.271314] p54: unknown eeprom code : 0x3
[ 33.271337] p54: unknown eeprom code : 0x1905
[ 33.272181] p54: unknown eeprom code : 0x1007
[ 33.272197] p54: unknown eeprom code : 0x1008
[ 33.272210] p54: unknown eeprom code : 0x1100
[ 33.272260] phy0: hwaddr 00:0e:9b:29:75:e0, MAC:isl3890 RF:Frisbee
[ 33.280490] phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'pid'
##... (stuff deleted)
[ 56.198637] p54pci 0000:00:06.0: firmware: requesting isl3886
[ 56.585756] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready
[ 58.105288] wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:50:18:4f:64:5a
[ 58.109234] wlan0: authenticated
[ 58.109272] wlan0: associate with AP 00:50:18:4f:64:5a
[ 58.120863] wlan0: RX AssocResp from 00:50:18:4f:64:5a (capab=0x421 status=0 aid=1)
[ 58.120891] wlan0: associated
[ 58.125996] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): wlan0: link becomes ready
[ 58.195280] wlan0: disassociating by local choice (reason=3)
[ 68.576161] wlan0: no IPv6 routers present

[Kymidd (kymidd)]

First time poster. I'm experiencing very similar symptoms. The system monitor shows my cached memory soaring to fill the entirety of my ram. I can manually reset my cached ram with

sync; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

from the command line, which has about 75% effectiveness of putting off the memory lag. The cached memory immediately begins to build up again, and it seems to only happen when I'm file-sharing.

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 9.04
Release: 9.04

 uname -a
Linux kyler-laptop 2.6.28-15-generic #52-Ubuntu SMP Wed Sep 9 10:49:34 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

lspci -vvnn
## relevant output only
08:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 5300 AGN [Shiloh] Network Connection [8086:4235]
 Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device [8086:1001]
 Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx-
 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
 Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 2295
 Region 0: Memory at f2100000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: iwlagn
 Kernel modules: iwlagn

[^_Pepe_^ (jose-angel-fernandez-freire)]

This bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in
it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? Can you try
with the latest Karmic 9.10 release of Ubuntu? ISO CD images are
available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ .

If the issue remains, could you run the following command from a
Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal) while running Karmic. It
will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this
report.

apport-collect -p linux 383332

Thanks in advance

[Don (donweber)]

Architecture: amd64
Dependencies:

DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: linux None [modified: /var/lib/dpkg/info/linux.list]
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/zsh
 LANGUAGE=
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-17-generic x86_64
UserGroups: adm admin audio cdrom dialout dip fax floppy fuse lpadmin netdev plugdev scanner tape video

[Simon741 (simon-okko)]

At least for the instable connection, this seams to be still a problem. There are actually several other reports on similar cases:
- http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1205318
- http://www.uluga.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=9218200

[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

This bug report was marked as Incomplete and has not had any updated comments for quite some time. As a result this bug is being closed. Please reopen if this is still an issue in the current Ubuntu development release http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ . Also, please be sure to provide any requested information that may have been missing. To reopen the bug, click on the current status under the Status column and change the status back to "New". Thanks.

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