plx problem on soft reboot

[Santiago Garcia Mantinan]

Hi!

I have changed the pci adaptor in my AP from a pcmcia to a plx today, and I
found this weird behaviour...

It seems that the card works well first time machine is booted, if you do a
soft reboot the plx driver won't work on boot until you do:
a hardware reset
power off and on the machine again
remove the pcmcia card and plug it on again

These are the messages it says when booting is ok:

hostap_crypt: registered algorithm 'NULL'
hostap_crypt: registered algorithm 'WEP'
hostap_plx: 0.1.3 - 2004-02-08 (Jouni Malinen <jkmaline at cc.hut.fi>)
PLX9052 PCI/PCMCIA adapter: mem=0xf4001000, plx_io=0x6100, irq=11, pccard_io=0x6200
hostap_plx: CIS: 01 03 00 00 ff 17 ...
hostap_plx: manfid=0xc250, 0x0002
hostap_plx: cor_index=0x2 cor_offset=0x3e0
Prism2/2.5 PC Card detected in PLX9052 adapter
PLX_INTCSR=0x1063
PLX_CNTRL=0x180066d2 (Serial EEPROM present=1)
hostap_plx: Registered netdevice wlan0
prism2_hw_init: initialized in 110 ms
wlan0: NIC: id=0x8003 v1.0.0
wlan0: PRI: id=0x15 v0.3.0
wlan0: STA: id=0x1f v1.5.6

and these the ones after the soft reboot:

hostap_crypt: registered algorithm 'NULL'
hostap_crypt: registered algorithm 'WEP'
hostap_plx: 0.1.3 - 2004-02-08 (Jouni Malinen <jkmaline at cc.hut.fi>)
PLX9052 PCI/PCMCIA adapter: mem=0xf4001000, plx_io=0x6100, irq=11, pccard_io=0x6200
hostap_plx: CIS: 01 03 00 00 ff 17 ...
hostap_plx: manfid=0xc250, 0x0002
hostap_plx: cor_index=0x2 cor_offset=0x3e0
Prism2/2.5 PC Card detected in PLX9052 adapter
PLX_INTCSR=0x1067
PLX_CNTRL=0x180066d2 (Serial EEPROM present=1)
hostap_plx: Registered netdevice wlan0
wlan0: Command completion event, but no pending commands
hostap_plx: card initialization timed out
hostap_plx: hardware initialization failed
hostap_plx: No devices found, driver not installed.

I've seen however that if before the reboot I do a modprobe -r hostap_plx
then everything is ok when it boots up again.

So, my guesses are:
1- When the machine is rebooted the card is left in a state from which the
driver is not able to work with it.
2- A harware reset brings the card back to a normal state from which the
driver can work with it, but this computer doesn't issue a hardware reset
when doing a reboot (machine is an old Pentium board carries chipset i430FX)
3- Unloading the driver leaves the card in a good state for the driver to
work with when the machine has booted again, but this is not a good solution
if ones to cut out capabilities to enhance security in the machine.

I had used hostap_plx before with this cards without this problem, so I'm
asking myself why and I have three posible answers:
1- The other machines did issue the hardware reset on the reboot.
2- This is a configuration issue and I have changed to a config that
triggers this?
3- Changes in recent hostap code make this happen

I've looked up in the README, FAQ and so and I have not found anything about
this, is this a known issue? If so, is there any alternatives to the module
unloading for this not to happen?

If this is not a known issue and you want me to investigate any other thing
just let me know.

One unrelated question... is there any way to know what voltage does the PLX
adaptor use?

Well, guess that is all for now, other than that the driver works ok.

Thanks for your good job with this driver!

Regards...
-- 
Manty/BestiaTester -> http://manty.net