installation with 8139too hanging problem (a diagnosis)

[Santiago Garcia Mantinan <manty@debian.org>]

Hi!

I had experienced one of problems that Jordi also has on his install, I knew
it was related to the 8139too module, so I left it aside and used rtl8139
instead.

I have traced the thing and I have found that the problem is in dbootstrap's
util.c, we have a function called execlog that has this little piece of code:

  output = popen(cmd, "r");
  while (fgets(line, MAXLINE, output) != NULL ) {
    syslog(priority, line);
  }
  closelog();

Well, the thing is that it waits forever on the fgets as the 8139too module
whe ifconfig creates a kernel thread that doesn't close the filehandles it
get's from ifconfig, wich are connected to us.

I have commented this problem on the linux-lernel m.l. and Andrew Morton has
replied with a solution for the kernel module that seems to work, so I have
filed Bug#97932 against kernel-source-2.2.19 to explain Herbert what happens
and how this could be fixed, let's hope he does :-)

Regards...
-- 
Manty/BestiaTester -> http://manty.net