Re: Any insight on this ubuntu bug?

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Tue, 2010-01-26 at 15:44 -0500, Tom Sutherland wrote:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/352228
> 
> Wireless gets disconnected every so often and it appears the only
> workaround is to do a "sudo restart network-manager"
> 
> It makes sense that this is a crappy firmware/driver issues with
> specific Intel cards, but is it possible network-manager isn't coping
> well?

I seem to recall a kernel patch for this bug being submitted in the past
week or two.

Basically, it's a driver bug.  I'd be very skeptical of a simple NM
restart fixing this as that doesn't do anything reinitialize or fix the
driver.  An rmmod/modprobe is necessary in situations like that to
re-load the driver and get it talking to the card again.

There are some ways to make NM more aware of the situation, but in
general we should be making sure the drivers work correctly.  I'm
somewhat reluctant to go anywhere near having NM rmmod/modprobe
anything, because if the driver is already having problems, often
rmmod/modprobe can wedge your machine or make it kernel panic.  It's not
really a workable solution.

We do need more detailed error information conveyed from wpa_supplicant
up to NM so that maybe we can detect when the card is having problems.

Dan