Date: Fri, 28 May 2010 12:23:53 +0200 From: "Lassi Tuura" <lat@cern.ch> To: freebsd-net@freebsd.org Subject: System freeze with Atheros 2417 WiFi PCIe card? Message-ID: <453f02bbe68493628773d532086cf712.squirrel@cmsmac01.cern.ch>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Hi, I have a system on which I've installed FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE, then later 8.0-STABLE 201004 (amd64). Under heavy disk load the system freezes totally: screen goes blank and it loses all connection outside world - network, keyboard, etc. won't work. Sometimes the screen gets filled with stripes instead. Only hard reboot pressing and holding the power button revives the system. The only way I have found to reproduce the problem is heavy disk load, e.g. running something very seek rich, e.g. iozone or competing dd processes. Since the computer goes completely 'black' when this happens, there is nothing in logs for the preceding 30 seconds, and no messages on any console. I searched various freebsd list and bug database archives, and didn't find anything similar enough. After taking parts out and swapping parts with another computer, I am left with strong evidence the problem is caused or at least triggered by PCIe wifi card, TP-LINK TL-WN350GD. Removing the card makes the system stable, whereas removing or swapping any other parts seems to make no difference at all. The WiFi itself works otherwise fine as far as I can tell. The motherboard is ASUS M4A78L-M LE, otherwise there's 4GB ECC RAM, AMD Athlon II X2 235e CPU, and 4 * 1 TB HDDs. The card is identified in dmesg as: ath0: <Atheros 2417> mem 0xfebf0000-0xfebfffff irq 21 at device 7.0 on pci3 ath0: [ITHREAD] ath0: AR2417 mac 15.0 RF5424 phy 7.0 The motherboard LAN is identified as: alc0: <Atheros AR8131 PCIe Gigabit Ethernet> port 0xec00-0xec7f mem 0xfeac0000-0xfeafffff irq 18 at device 0.0 on pci2 alc0: 15872 Tx FIFO, 15360 Rx FIFO alc0: Using 1 MSI message(s). alc0: 4GB boundary crossed, switching to 32bit DMA addressing mode. miibus0: <MII bus> on alc0 atphy0: <Atheros F1 10/100/1000 PHY> PHY 0 on miibus0 atphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, 1000baseT-FDX, auto alc0: Ethernet address: 90:e6:ba:6d:e8:fb alc0: [FILTER] Any idea what would cause this? Are there known problems with ath driver? Is this some sort of hardware conflict? What can I do to isolate, debug and/or fix the problem? Or should I just get another wifi card? If so, any recommended chipsets? Regards, Lassi
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?453f02bbe68493628773d532086cf712.squirrel>