Bug#596649: linux-image-2.6.32-5-openvz-amd64: system crash using rtl818x USB wlan

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Hi Steven,

Steven Chamberlain wrote:

> After several hours or days of running aircrack-ng (in this instance 
> only 90 minutes) on a USB rtl8187 wlan interface, a strange kind of 
> kernel lockup happens.  Many processes hang, I think when they attempt 
> some kind of disk I/O.  I remember having a similar issue in 2.6.26 
> kernels, too, on the same system.

Is this still reproducible?

If so, two pieces of information would make it easier to move forward:

 1. Please provide a summary of blocked tasks when reproducing this,
    for example by using the magic sysrq key "T", "D", or "W".

    You might need to run "echo 1 >/proc/sys/kernel/sysrq" first, to
    enable permission to use those commands.  See Documentation/sysrq.txt
    for details.

 2. Please test with a 3.x.y kernel from sid or experimental.  The
    only packages from outside squeeze aside from the kernel image
    itself you should need in order to test are linux-base and
    initramfs-tools.

The first piece would help investigate what is causing the deadlock.
The latter would let us get help from upstream if the problem still
exists there, or start to look for an existing patch with a fix if it
doesn't.

Thanks and hope that helps,
Jonathan