RE: Problems with usb adapter: 'NETDEV WATCHDOG: wlan0:

Hi! First of all, thanks for your time.

> This sounds alot like problems that I and others were having earlier this
> year. Do a Google search on this list with keywords like 'freeze' and
> 'hal' for the April to July
> timeframe.
> 
> The reason is that whilst the usb card works very well, it
> does seem to have a nasty quirk whereby if the kernel sends
> certain usb control messages to it once it is in operation, then it causes
> the card to freeze sometime later (could be
> seconds or many minutes).
> 
> We identified that the cause of these control messages were
> other programs like 'hal', which sniffs around the usb bus
> to see what devices are attached. Typically the card would
> be initialised, and then a bit later hal would sniff it out - and from
> that point the card was doomed.
> 

I've read the thread's of june. Quite awesome... 

> The solution for us was
> a) a newer version of hal (0.5.x rather than 0.4.x) which does less
> sniffing
> b) if necessary, tweak the boot sequence to ensure the card
> is brought up AFTER hal has started and done its initial
> sniffing.
> 
> Hal is not the only potential culprit, it also depends
> on your hotplug/coldplug scripts as well.
> 
> 

Well, I think I don't have hald running on the system ("ps -ef |grep hald"
retrieves nothing).

Instead, reading your previous mails of june, I've read something about
dbus/hald:

# ps -ef | grep dbus
72        3921     1  0 Dec13 ?        00:00:00 dbus-daemon-1 --system
jordi     5023  4968  0 00:00 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/bluez-pin --dbus
jordi     5054     1  0 00:00 ?        00:00:00 dbus-launch --sh-syntax
--exit-w                       ith-session
jordi     5055     1  0 00:00 ?        00:00:00 dbus-daemon-1 --fork
--print-pid                        8 --print-address 6 --session
root      5504  5469  0 00:05 pts/4    00:00:00 grep dbus

Do you know if with "dbus" happens the same?? How do I know the version of
dbus I have running, and where can I find a newer version for download,
suitable for my distro?


> >
> > Another annoying problem: before booting the system I have to unplug and
> > plug again the usb adapter in order to Linux configure it correctly when
> > initiating Linux. Generally I do it when the grub menu appears...
> obviously,
> > to do that every time I reboot the pc is very annoying... in the wlan-
> ng's
> > README file I read that introducing the line "options prism2_usb
> > prism2_doreset=1" in modules.conf solves the problem, but it doesn't
> work.
> > Maybe I am confused and this is not the solution to that problem...
> >
> 
> This should not be necessary. It suggests the coldplug
> mechanism is not working in your boot sequence.
> 

Let's talk about hotplug... it was not activated on my system, so (just for
try and see) I activated the hotplug service. Then I booted up the system
and... surprise, a new annoying message in /var/log/messages appeared:

Dec 14 00:00:12 localhost kernel: p80211knetdev_hard_start_xmit: Tx attempt
prior to association, frame dropped

What happens now??

More things I've seen... in /var/log/messages appears a suspicious message:

Dec 13 23:59:43 localhost udev: Inicia udev succeeded
Dec 13 23:59:43 localhost service_harddrake[3212]: ### Program is starting 
###
Dec 13 23:59:43 localhost service_harddrake[3212]: modified file 
/etc/X11/XF86Config
Dec 13 23:59:49 localhost harddrake:  succeeded
Dec 13 23:59:49 localhost wlan: Starting WLAN Devices:
Dec 13 23:59:49 localhost wlan: FATAL: Module p80211_prism2_usb not found.
<== WHAT HAPPENS HERE?
Dec 13 23:59:49 localhost wlan: ^[[65G[^[[1;32m
Dec 13 23:59:49 localhost wlan:  D'ACORD
Dec 13 23:59:49 localhost rc: S'està iniciant wlan:  succeeded
Dec 13 23:59:49 localhost network: S'estan configurant els paràmetres de la
xarxa:  succeeded
Dec 13 23:59:50 localhost network: S'està iniciat la interfície loopback:
succeeded
Dec 13 23:59:50 localhost portmap: Inici de portmap succeeded


I can't understand why appears this message. Anyway this doesn't affect to
the connection. I've also observed that the wlan service appears as stopped
in the list of available services... (the check mark for start the wlan at
boot is activated!) (?)

Here is the result of the lsmod command, I don't know if its relevant or
not, anyway here it is:

#lsmod

prism2_usb             77700  0
p80211                 30992  1 prism2_usb
usblp                  11936  0
ohci-hcd               19972  0
ehci-hcd               27972  0
uhci-hcd               30448  0
usbcore               107396  8
ov511,prism2_usb,usblp,ohci-hcd,ehci-hcd,uhci-hcd


I've also tried to introduce a sleep 15 command in rc.local script, in order
to give time to the dbus system to scan all the devices, as you point in
your previous e-mails... but doesn't work.

More ideas? 

Thanks!

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