Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:37:07 -0400 From: "Edward Ruggeri" <smallhand@crawblog.com> To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Ath driver causes kernel panic (page fault) on 7.0-STABLE during use Message-ID: <919383240807230637o447d2763gd1802dc5f3dd4973@mail.gmail.com>
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Hi, I recently purchased a Lenovo ThinkPad with a ThinkPad 11a/b/g Wireless LAN Mini Express Adapter (based on the AR5212 chipset). I got kernel panics while using the wireless card under 7-STABLE, so to try to isolate the problem, I've wiped the hard-drive and reinstalled FreeBSD from scratch. Under 7.0-RELEASE, installed yesterday (7/22/08) from FTP source, wireless works well; I can use the Lynx browser, download ports/source, etc. But when I update to 7-STABLE, I can still establish a connection to the wireless network (i.e., receive an IP) and (generally) receive a few webpages, but quickly and inevitably, I get a kernel panic (fatal trap 12: page fault while in kernel mode). I have been using a GENERIC kernel to isolate problems. This suggests (to me, at least) a problem in 7-STABLE that does not exist in 7.0-RELEASE. I do not have the laptop with me here at work. When I get home, I plan to recompile the kernel with debugging options, so I can get and examine a core dump. I'll also switch out the ULE for 4BSD scheduler, and remove SMP support, to see if those might be at fault. I did this about a week ago when I first started having problems under 7-STABLE; changing the scheduler and removing SMP did not seem to fix the problem. A backtrace at that time indicated that, in ath_start, the following assertion failed (line 1478 in ath.c): bf = STAILQ_FIRST(&frags); KASSERT(bf != NULL, ("no buf for txfrag")); I will attempt to verify those results on the new, clean install. Any other recommendations? My understanding is that many people likely have this ath chipset, and even this same ThinkPad wireless card. >From looking over problem reports, it doesn't seem other people have had this problem, though. Is FreeBSD-Stable a good place to ask about this problem, or should I proceed directly to filing a problem report (do not pass go, do not collect $200)? Thanks! Sincerely, -- Ned Ruggeri
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