system freeze on heavy network traffic for more than a few minutes.[ath5k phy0: failed to warm reset the MAC Chip - can't reset hardware (-5)]

[Mike M]

Since upgrading from 10.10 to 11 every time I use a torrent client my system completely freezes and nothing works to bring it back other than a hard reboot. Usually the lights on my keyboard go out but sometimes they're still on and a Ctrl-Alt-BackSpace or Alt-SysReq-REISUB etc. do nothing.

I normally use KTorrent so tried upgrading that to the latest version which didn't help, also I tried downloading a new client qBittorrent but that didn't help either.

The crash/freeze is very reliable and happens about 1-4 minutes after turning the client on (with active torrents, if they're all inactive it seems ok). /var/crashes doesn't have any reports related to the freeze. If you need any logs to determine what's going on let me know where to look and I'll add them.

If I don't run any torrent clients then other than some compiz problems my machine is stable and can happily run all day. Before I upgraded it was totally stable and never froze - I've not changed any network or torrent client/router config since then.

Any ideas?

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

Hello Mike
Can you reproduce the bug with transmission?
Thanks
Fabio

[Mike M (mkmacdonagh)]

Hi Fabio, sorry for the delay....

Yes, I just downloaded and installed transmission and set a torrent going, 3 minutes later a total freeze.

Oddly I've noticed that it takes longer to freeze if I'm actively using my machine (maybe 20-30 mins) than when I'm leaving it idle (3-4 mins)

[mapron (mapron)]

just the same behavior, after closing any torrent client during few minutes system keeps alive )

[Mike M (mkmacdonagh)]

I reinstalled 10.10 on a laptop and used it as a torrent server and it's completely stable, been running for over a week quite happily. My ubuntu 11 machine doesn't crash every five minutes any more now I'm not running a torrent client but it still freezes if there's "heavy" network traffic such as doing a bunch of big http downloads or watching a lot of streaming video.

I think the torrent thing might be a red herring, the real problem is that something in networking is unstable.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Ubuntu because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Brett Bittrick (elderscrollsnut)]

I'm having a similar issue with every torrent client I've tried (Deluge, Transmission, and Azureus). I think I've found a workaround though. Apparently having an encrypted home directory is interfering with torrent downloads somehow. When I moved the download folder to an unencrypted partition it works perfectly. It could be a red herring, but I can consistently reproduce it and all of my torrent clients function flawlessly now. Let me know if I can be of assistance in any way (contributing logs, running tests etc).

[Charles Kerr (charlesk)]

The comments in this ticket say that the same behavior occurs when using KTorrent, Deluge, qBitTorrent, and Azureus -- so it's not a Transmission issue per se. I could add the other clients to the 'affects' list, but it seems likely that there's a better package category for this situation.

Recategorizing to 'Ubuntu' for a second opinion.

[Mike M (mkmacdonagh)]

I actually think it's nothing to do with torrents, I can re-create the freeze just by downloading a big (>400Mb) file

[Brett Bittrick (elderscrollsnut)]

@Mike M I can't recreate that in firefox or using filezilla to access files on an ftp server.

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

@ jordan
Sorry i've suscribed Trasnsmission just to have another, and much expert opinion.
This seems surely related to something shared by all the involved applications, but let's see indeep.
As the original reporter of this issue is Mike:
@ Mike M.
can you please reproduce the issue then attach here, using the button below 'Add attachment or patch' the files:
/var/log/dmesg
/var/log/dmesg.0
/var/log/kern.log
/var/log/kern.log.old
/var/log/Xorg.0.log
/var/log/Xorg.0.log.old
Does it still reproducible in Natty too
Thanks
Fabio

[Mike M (mkmacdonagh)]

Sorry for the delay, thanks for looking into this.

I've updated the summary to reflect that this isn't just about torrents, in fact any large download caused the freeze. It's stopping me from upgrading to 11.10 :(

Attachments as requested with the exception of kern.log.old as I don't have that file. This freeze happened when I was half way through the Ubuntu distro upgrade from the Update manager to 11.10.

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

From kern.log

Oct 15 16:42:16 mmdmike kernel: [ 3814.188803] ath5k phy0: failed to warm reset the MAC Chip
Oct 15 16:42:16 mmdmike kernel: [ 3814.188810] ath5k phy0: can't reset hardware (-5)

[Robert (metzgerr-9)]

Hello,

I can confirm this bug for Ubuntu 11.10. I can reproduce the bug by transferring a large file using scp. My kern.log file does not contain messages like posted above.

I first suspected the driver (tg3) of my Broadcom BCM57781 chip as the reason. Today I bought a new NIC, with a Realtek RTL8169SC chip (driver r8169) but I can still reproduce the bug.

[Joseph Salisbury (jsalisbury)]

Would it be possible for you to test the latest upstream kernel? It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Please test the release candidate kernel versus the daily build. Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

[Robert (metzgerr-9)]

Hello,
I'm no longer affected by this bug. The reason for the crashes were broken main memory. I think it occurred because the transfer filled up the cache which then reached higher memory regions which where faulty.

Hopefully the original poster of this bug can help solving this issue.

Sorry for the wrong report!

[Mike M (mkmacdonagh)]

Sorry, what is an "upstream" kernel?

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

Hello
Upstream kernels are the most advanced and experimental, try it if you want at your own risk:
http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.1-rc10-oneiric/
installing on first the one with the extension all.deb, then linux-headers and linux-image for your architecture (i386 or amd64).
Fabio

[Mike M (mkmacdonagh)]

Unfortunately I don't have a spare machine and I need this one for work so I'm wary of doing something so risky :(

[Mike M (mkmacdonagh)]

I recently got to the point where my machine was crashing every 20mins or so. I've changed the wifi card and now it's stable again so this no longer affects me. Thanks for your help.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Mike M, this bug report is being closed due to your last comment regarding you swapping out the WiFI card. For future reference you can manage the status of your own bugs by clicking on the current status in the yellow line and then choosing a new status in the revealed drop down box. You can learn more about bug statuses at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Status. Thank you again for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please submit any future bugs you may find.