Resets and kernel freezes

[Milan Krcmar]

Hello Jouni, hi everybody,

I haven't been to this list for several months and a short search in its
archives did not answer me the following questions...

- Do I still have to watch for card's functionality by generating some
  traffic and "iwpriv wlanx reset 1" it when it fails to communicate?

- Is the above mentioned reset command fatal with some probability to
  the kernel (i.e. does the kernel freeze when I reset my card several
  times).

The hostap drivers and Zcomax Xi626 PCI cards (PRISM2.5) are the only
choice for our network counting approx. 20 wireless routers, because of
its richness in functions. We are misusing the Wi-Fi techology for
a wireless-only metropolitan network.

Because of the resets being able to freeze the whole router, we have to
add a hardware watchdog to every router. (The resets are triggered both
by the driver itself and by the scripts watching for its functionality,
mostly at time of heavy traffic load.)

I don't know of any particular combination of hardware (I mean the PC
itself), drivers and firmware which does not suffer from the fatal
resets. I have already seen tens of linux PCs with such a behaviour,
sometimes the PC freezes every minute, sometimes it takes as long as
several months, but both I and all my Wi-Fi friends have at the end the
same problem.

The purpose of this mail is to get current information about these
problems and, mainly, to start any process which would result in a final
solution, should it involve more kernel developers, hardware analyzers
(laboratory equipment) and so on... We have many resources for this.

Milan