Bug#562981: rt2860-source: connection drops - debian kernel 2.6.32

[Timothee Besset]

Package: rt2860-source
Severity: important

On latest sid kernel:
Linux plageis 2.6.32-trunk-amd64 #1 SMP Thu Dec 17 06:29:18 UTC 2009
x86_64 GNU/Linux

My wireless connection suddenly drops after 20 to 30 minutes of usage,
especially when I run the program synergy between my machines (if I am
not running synergy it can take many hours between every drops).

In the syslog I see:
ERROR!!! RTMPCancelTimer failed, Timer hasn't been initialize!
right as the connection drops

at that point only solution is:
ifdown wlan0 ; rmmod rt2860sta ; sleep 2 ; modprobe rt2860sta ; ifup wlan0

I am not sure where else to report this, I found this package from
http://wiki.debian.org/rt2860sta and the vendor's support page returns a
404 (http://www.ralinktech.com/ralink/Home/Support/Linux.html)

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-trunk-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

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[Ben Hutchings]

On Tue, 2009-12-29 at 12:02 -0600, Timothee Besset wrote:
> Package: rt2860-source
> Severity: important
>
> On latest sid kernel:
> Linux plageis 2.6.32-trunk-amd64 #1 SMP Thu Dec 17 06:29:18 UTC 2009
> x86_64 GNU/Linux
>
> My wireless connection suddenly drops after 20 to 30 minutes of usage,
> especially when I run the program synergy between my machines (if I am
> not running synergy it can take many hours between every drops).
>
> In the syslog I see:
> ERROR!!! RTMPCancelTimer failed, Timer hasn't been initialize!
> right as the connection drops
>
> at that point only solution is:
> ifdown wlan0 ; rmmod rt2860sta ; sleep 2 ; modprobe rt2860sta ; ifup wlan0
>
> I am not sure where else to report this, I found this package from
> http://wiki.debian.org/rt2860sta and the vendor's support page returns a
> 404 (http://www.ralinktech.com/ralink/Home/Support/Linux.html)

rt2860sta is now included in kernel packages (among the 'staging'
drivers). This bug has been reassigned accordingly. Please follow up
to this bug report (#562981) using reportbug, which should automatically
include some useful information about your system.

Ben.

--
Ben Hutchings
Reality is just a crutch for people who can't handle science fiction.

[Moritz Muehlenhoff]

tags 562981 moreinfo
thanks

Timothee, does this still occur with latest kernels? If so, could
you follow up as outlined by Ben?

Cheers,
Moritz

[Jonathan Nieder]

Hi,

Timothee Besset wrote:

> Linux plageis 2.6.32-trunk-amd64 #1 SMP Thu Dec 17 06:29:18 UTC 2009
> x86_64 GNU/Linux
>
> My wireless connection suddenly drops after 20 to 30 minutes of usage,
> especially when I run the program synergy between my machines (if I am
> not running synergy it can take many hours between every drops).
>
> In the syslog I see:
> ERROR!!! RTMPCancelTimer failed, Timer hasn't been initialize!

Sorry for the slow response. As Ben mentioned, after you reported
this, the driver was merged into the main kernel package. Can you
still reproduce the bug? If so, please try the following:

1. Attach output from "reportbug --template linux-image-$(uname -r)"
right after experiencing it. This will give us some logs and
tell us a little about your hardware.

2. Try to reproduce with a 3.x kernel from unstable or experimental
(the corresponding driver there is rt2800pci). The only packages
from outside of squeeze needed for this aside from the
linux-image-* packages themselves are linux-base and
initramfs-tools.

If it exhibits similar problems, please report this upstream at
linux-w...@vger.kernel.org, cc-ing us...@rt2x00.serialmonkey.com
and either me or this bug log so we can track the resulting
discussion.

If it does not exhibit similar problems and the latest squeeze
kernel does, we have an interesting task ahead of us. Maybe we
could take inspiration from the new driver when fixing the old
driver, or maybe it would be worth just backporting rt2800pci
altogether.

3. Any new, weird symptoms in the meantime? Was this a regression,
or was the driver always broken? Etc.

Thanks for reporting, and I hope we can find a fix.

Regards,
Jonathan

[Timothee Besset]

Hey Jonathan,

Thanks for following up on this. I haven't seen this happening on 3.x
kernels since I switched a few weeks back. I haven't been using the
system for gaming/voip or with synergy though, so it's possible my usage
patterns have changed .. but generally speaking I feel this is gone now.

TTimo

[Jonathan Nieder]

Timothee Besset wrote:

> Thanks for following up on this. I haven't seen this happening on 3.x
> kernels since I switched a few weeks back.

Thanks. Could you provide the current (fixed) version number and some
information about your hardware and drivers in use, to help us
understand this better in case someone finds time to work on it for
squeeze? For example, attaching the output of

reportbug --template linux-image-$(uname -r)

which calls /usr/share/bug/linux-image-$(uname -r)/script, would
accomplish this.

[Jonathan Nieder]

found 562981 linux-2.6/2.6.32-2
quit

Jonathan Nieder wrote:

> Timothee Besset wrote:

>> My wireless connection suddenly drops after 20 to 30 minutes of usage,
>> especially when I run the program synergy between my machines (if I am
>> not running synergy it can take many hours between every drops).

[...]

> Could you provide the current (fixed) version number and some
> information about your hardware and drivers in use, to help us
> understand this better

[...]

> For example, attaching the output of
>
> reportbug --template linux-image-$(uname -r)
>
> which calls /usr/share/bug/linux-image-$(uname -r)/script, would
> accomplish this.

Ping. Do you still have access to this hardware, and if so, would you
be interested in pursuing a fix in squeeze?