From: John W. Linville on
On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 08:06:13AM +0100, Pedro Francisco wrote:
> Greetings!
>
> Is it possible a faulty ath5k module to affect diverse parts of kernel causing
> different oopses to happen referencing things as different as cdrom_ioctl,
> find_vma, i915_gem_object_get_pages, get_vfs_caps_from_disk,
> warn_slowpath_common (ath5k_tasklet_rx), proc_lookup_de and
> _spin_lock(ext4_getattr) [soft lookup]?
>
> The task in which such errors happen is capturing packets with kismet during
> the night. The errors aren't easy to create, sometimes they've already
> happened when I check the computer in the morning and sometimes they require
> stirring up the computer a bit such as starting X.
>
> I memtested the machine during 7h and no error was detected.
>
> I've been trying different kernels but main one is 2.6.32-21-generic, Ubuntu
> flavour, with linux-backports-modules-wireless-lucid-generic installed. I would
> use 2.6.34-rc5 vanilla if shutdown and suspend worked ;)
>
> As such:
> a) is it "normal"? I thought modules were somewhat isolated these days.
> b) any advices for debugging? I've yet to have two oopses that are similar....

It is certainly possible -- improper setup of DMA could be scribbling
over memory that doesn't belong to ath5k. That sort of thing can be
ugly to track-down...

You mentioned Kismet. Do you experience this sort of problem when
using ath5k for "normal" purposes (e.g. browsing the web)? Or only
when using it to monitor the network?

John
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From: me on
On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 09:48:23AM -0400, John W. Linville wrote:
> > a) is it "normal"? I thought modules were somewhat isolated these days.
> > b) any advices for debugging? I've yet to have two oopses that are similar....

Advice for debugging: turn on slub/slab debug options, and possibly
kmemcheck. kmemcheck was very helpful for me last time I had such
a corruption issue.

--
Bob Copeland %% www.bobcopeland.com

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From: Maciej Żenczykowski on
Do you have more than ~2.5-3.5GB of ram (enough to make some ram
non-32-bit-DMA-accessible) with swiotlb enabled,
if such are you seeing "DMA: Out of SW-IOMMU space" kernel messages?

On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 09:37, <me(a)bobcopeland.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 09:48:23AM -0400, John W. Linville wrote:
>> > a) is it "normal"? I thought modules were somewhat isolated these days.
>> > b) any advices for debugging? I've yet to have two oopses that are similar....
>
> Advice for debugging: turn on slub/slab debug options, and possibly
> kmemcheck.  kmemcheck was very helpful for me last time I had such
> a corruption issue.
>
> --
> Bob Copeland %% www.bobcopeland.com
>
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From: Dan Carpenter on
On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 08:06:13AM +0100, Pedro Francisco wrote:
> Greetings!
>
> Is it possible a faulty ath5k module to affect diverse parts of kernel causing
> different oopses to happen referencing things as different as cdrom_ioctl,
> find_vma, i915_gem_object_get_pages, get_vfs_caps_from_disk,
> warn_slowpath_common (ath5k_tasklet_rx), proc_lookup_de and
> _spin_lock(ext4_getattr) [soft lookup]?
>

Yes.

A bug a kernel module could corrupt any memory.

If you know a working version of the kernel try a git bisect otherwise
just post your dmesg with the crash etc.

regards,
dan carpenter
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