Eee PC sometimes crashes when pressing the wireless toggle key

[Jan Hoffmann]

When pressing the wireless toggle key on my Eee PC 901 it sometimes crashes and I have to press the power button to shut it down (Alt + SysRq + REISUB doesn't work). This problem probably exists on other Eee PCs with the Ralink rt2860 wireless chipset, too. I've installed Karmic.

[elmurato (elmurato87)]

I can confirm this issue with my EeePC 901 and its rt2860 wifi chipset. The screen goes black and there is no possibility to change the VTs or restart X.
But I also noticed that this problem doesn`t occur if I deactivate wireless in gnome-network-manager before I press Fn+F2 to switch off wifi. So maybe we should deactivate the ra0 interface before switching wifi off in the corresponding script.

[Ritz (jonas-ritz)]

I can confirm that this issue is the same with my EeePC 1000H with the rt2860 wifi chipset.
Running 9.10 / 2.6.31-rc6 from the update channels.

[Ritz (jonas-ritz)]

With Intel PRO/wireless 3945ABG wifi chipset installed on my EeePC 1000H, Fn+F2 toggle wifi on/off works without problems. With RT2860 installed, screen gets black, system freeze, and you have to push powerbutton for 6 sec. to shut down. At next boot you have to toogle wifi on again.
Running 9.10 / 2.6.31-rc6.

[Ritz (jonas-ritz)]

I dont know if it has anything to do with the problems with rt2860 or not, but in firestarter the ralink chipset is called device ra0 and the type is unknown while the Intel chipset is called wlan1 and the type is wireless.