(possibly) broken drivers (ral and rum)
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If I apply all changes after setting the rum interface into adhoc mode I see a similar crash (at ieee80211_getcapinfo+0x56) but with slightly different stacktrace.
Summary: Infrastructure mode is ok, Access Point and adhoc cause crashes.
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If that's the case, then it's either going to end up being a driver bug, or a bug with your particular chip.
Not sure you'd get any real response on a driver bug here, but if you can reproduce that with a stock FreeBSD 8 installation, you could report it directly to FreeBSD.
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I'm happy to report it as FreeBSD bug. What does a click on Apply all changes map into? At most a couple of ifconfig shell commands? If so, what?
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Some ifconfig commands and it writes out a config for hostapd.
Check the contents of /tmp and /var/etc - I'm not sure if it still does, but it used to write out a script with the ifconfig commands in it. I know the hostapd config should be in /var/etc
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Thanks for the hints jimp. /etc/inc/interfaces.php writes the hostapd and wpa_supplicant configuration and associated shell commands into /tmp/rum0_wlan_setup.sh but it doesn't save the other ifconfig commands anywhere. Nonetheless, reading through the code I worked out a fairly simple set to demonstrate the problem.
The following shell commands are sufficient to crash my FreeBSD 8.0 Release system and my pfSense 2.0 BETA box.
ifconfig wlan create wlandev rum0 wlanmode adhoc bssid
ifconfig wlan0 mode 11b
ifconfig wlan0 up mode 11b ssid Bree protmode off -mediaopt hostap mediaopt adhoc -hidessid -pureg -puren -apbridge -mediaopt turbo -wme authmode open wepmode off
There is a noticeable pause between the shell prompt after the last command and the system crash.
I'll arrange for a FreeBSD problem report to be submitted.
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Try changing that last command to:
ifconfig wlan0 up mode 11b ssid Bree -apbridge -wme authmode open wepmode off
See if it still does the same with that. Â You could also try removing bssid, but that was added after you already saw the issue on your system and is likely unrelated. Â You could even try just a very basic command:
ifconfig wlan0 up mode 11b ssid Bree
If that still doesn't work, also try leaving off the mode 11b.
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I'm guessing it probably is the same without bssid, since you reported this before it was added to the commands used (and probably only applies for hostap mode anyway). Â Removing that, you would pretty much have it reduced to the bare minimum commands to get it operational.
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The ral problem I reported earlier in this thread is also easily reproduced. The two commands:
ifconfig wlan create wlandev ral0 wlanmode hostap bssid
ifconfig wlan0 up ssid Bree
are sufficient to crash the pfSense system, again after a pause of no more than a few seconds after the second command completes.
The same two commands with hostap replaced by adhoc have a similar result.
When I issued the two commands
ifconfig wlan create wlandev ral0 bssid
ifconfig wlan0 up ssid Bree
the system successfully continued for some minutes until I forced a reboot.
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ral update:
I have further investigated the ral problem and found that ral wasn't interrupting, even when in infrastructure mode. Close inspection showed the PCI card wasn't seated evenly in the PCI socket; the edge closer to the back panel protruded a little more than the edge further from the back panel. So I evened out it and rebooted and the system did not crash on clicking Apply all changes in any of the three modes: ad-hoc, access point or Infrastructure.
However when the NIC was configured in Infrastructure mode it repeatedly reported "device timout" and my netbook saw no evidence of a signal corresponding to the ssid I had configured. I saw a problem report about this ( http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=kern/117655 ) but I thought the explanation was unconvincing. I'm using a 90W PicoPS and a 48W switch mode PS (12V @ 4A) so I suppose the surge current capability of this is a fair bit lower than that of a more standard computer power supply. I can get a pretty cheap card with a more recent ral chip (rt2561) so I might get that to try out.
