'hostap-utils' causes soft lockup when booting lucid

[Felix Lechner]

Binary package hint: hostap-utils

On a lucid install from beta2 cd subsequently upgraded to 10.04, installing 'hostap-utils' leads to a soft lockup during boot every time.

Because of lucid's parallel boot procedure, it was difficult to identify the offending package. However, removing the package makes lucid bootable again.

Booting with 'vesa', 'verbose', or 'single' kernel options does not help.

The problem is reproducible.

Looking at the package files, it looks like the 'modprobe.d' or 'if-pre-up.d' files are causing the problem during boot. Swap was activated and init-bottom had been run, if that helps at all.

This is the i386 version on an older Thinkpad R40 (Type 2681-J1C). The package version is '1:0.4.7-1ubuntu1' from universe.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: hostap-utils (not installed)
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-22.33-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-22-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat May 1 22:51:38 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Beta i386 (20100406.1)
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: hostap-utils

[Chris Boyle (chris-boyle-1978)]

I can confirm this bug using the final release of Lucid Lynx (10.04) fully up to date as of today, June 11th. It can easily be reproduced. I'll add more information when I find exactly what's wrong.

[Chris Boyle (chris-boyle-1978)]

Ok, back with more info.

I was unable to get past the soft lockup in any fashion, except booting from a LiveCD. Then, I did the following:

-----
$ sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/hostap-utils.conf

Comment out the following line:

# blacklist orinoco_pci
-----

After doing this, I was able to boot normally and could remove the package if I wanted to. I'm unable to figure out why blacklisting orinoco_pci causes a soft lockup.

System Information:

Sharp Actius PC-MV14 Laptop
Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04 (Fully Updated as of 06/11/2010)
hostap-utils 1:0.4.7-1ubuntu1

If there is any information someone needs, just let me know. I'm unsure what else I can provide to help.

[Julius Thor (joolli)]

It's because if you don't load orinoco_pci the hostap_pci wireless driver gets loaded instead. Both drivers support the card and the kernel doesn't know which one to load but orinoco_pci usually gets loaded for some reason. The hostap_pci module has been broken for a long time but the Ubuntu team doesn't seem to care at all.

[QPrime (mwells)]

In related news... the hostap upstream driver maintainers seem to have corrected the initialization issue for PCI devices in Linux 2.6.35 tree. Recent Ubuntu Maverick kernel updates contain this fix and my PCI prism based card is now working properly on Maverick.