HostAP Stability (fixed??)

[Jim TerWee]

2 GB of data using ftp and its still running fine on a Soekris 4521 the
sw_tick_stuck is still at 0. Uploaded the new driver to 10 of my access
points will how they do the next couple days


> On Sun, May 11, 2003 at 09:57:29PM -0500, Dave Hinkle wrote:
>
>> The vast majority of our routers are soekris based, and we're having
>> constant problems with locked up cards.  If you could make the work
>> around patches available, we would really appreciate it.
>
> OK. The workaround for recovering from these hangs is now available in
> CVS version. It should detect a hang situation and recover from it in
> about five seconds.
>
> Better yet, I think I found and fixed the real cause for the issue.
> There was a race condition in reading and writing event mask
> (local->event_mask vs. IntEn register). This enabled a scenario in which
> sw irq handler for BAP0 events (hostap_bap_tasklet) unmasked those
> events and was immediately interrupted by the next event. This
> interrupt could happen between local->event_mask and IntEn writes..
>
> After fixing this race (by removing local->event_mask), I have been
> unable to cause the hang anymore. So far, I have sent more than 1 GB of
> data through without any problems. Of course this is not a proof that
> the problem is solved, but at least things look much better now. Btw,
> only using TCP flood did not seem to be enough to tricker the hang. I
> needed to add some printk's to print something over 9600 bps serial
> console to be able to hang the system..
>
> I did not remove the automatic recovery mechanism so that it will be
> easier to get useful information about other potential issues. The
> watchdog code will keep a counter of detected hangs. This is available
> from /proc/net/hostap/wlan#/debug (sw_tick_stuck). Please let me know,
> if you see this counter being incremented. In addition, these events
> will be reported in kernel log.
>
> --
> Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA
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-- 
Jim TerWee       | Our capacity for understanding is
jim at terwee.com   | inversely proportional to how
Invisimax        | much we think we know. The more I
                 | know, the more I don't know!