Memory leak in the libertas driver ?

Cyril HAENEL chaenel at free.fr
Mon Apr 6 11:17:00 EDT 2009


Cyril HAENEL a écrit :
> Hi all,
>
> I use a wifi card based on a 8385 chip on a home built board (blackfin 
> 537 and uclinux based), everything works well, but to have a lower 
> power cunsumption, I disconnect the card when I don't need the wiki 
> link. I don't physically disconnect the wifi card, in fact I set the 
> reset signal of the pcmcia socket and its power consumption is close 
> to 0.
>
> When I need to save power I do :
>
> - ifconfig eth0 down (to stop eth0)
> - pccardctl eject (needed to be able to unload libertas modules)
> - rmmod libertas_cs
> - rmmod libertas
> - Reset signal of the pcmcia socket set to 1.
>
> When I need the wifi link I do :
>
> - Reset signal of the pcmcia socket set to 0
> - pccardctl insert (in syslog a message tell me a new pcmcia device is 
> inserted)
> - insmod libertas.ko
> - insmod libertas_cs.ko
> - Load firmwares (at the end of the process the mac address is displayed)
> - ifconfig eth0 up
> - etc...
>
> It works well but after some unload/reload cycles the board freezes, 
> and there is no free memory. I think there is a memory leak somewhere 
> in libertas_cs.ko, because :
>
> - Multiple ifconfig eth0 down / ifconfig eth0 up doesn't cause a 
> growing memory usage
> - Multiple ifconfig eth0 down + pccardctl eject / pccardctl insert + 
> ifconfig eth0 up doesn't cause a growing memory usage
> - Multiple ifconfig eth0 down + pccardctl eject + rmmod libertas / 
> pccardctl insert + insmod libertas.ko + ifconfig eth0 up doesn't cause 
> a growing memory usage
>
> But in the last configuration, when libertas_cs.ko is unload / load, I 
> have memory leak and a growing memory usage.
>
> I don't use the last driver version, but anyone knows if a memory 
> leakage bug was found these last months in the driver ?
>
> Regards,
> Cyril HAENEL
>
I answer to myself,
It seems this memory leak was knew, and has been fixed in august 2008. 
It was the firmware which was not released....



-- 

Cyril Haenel
Registered Linux User #332632




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