iwlwifi crashes and causes other system resources to go with them

ghostInTheSSH · 2017-04-21 17:41:13

I am currently using Arch on my laptop and everything is set up and working well, however I have an irregular issue in which the wifi crashes. When the wifi crashes it takes many system resources with it and the terminal will become heavily gimped as sudo, system time, and access to commands with certain syscalls become inaccessible. I am currently running Arch on a Lenovo Thinkpad E570 and I am not using the standard Intel wifi I am using an Intel Wireless-AC 8620. I am going to post logs.
The error is hard to reproduce so it may take me a few days to get more information however I have other examples still in my syslogs.

lspci
https://pastebin.com/dRduTTLU

syslogs from journald
Everything
Alert and Crit Only
Alert, Crit, and Err

If you need other logs or information feel free to request it.

Last edited by ghostInTheSSH (2017-04-21 17:43:00)

seth · 2017-04-21 21:50:17

Do you use networkmanager and MAC_Address_Randomization?

ghostInTheSSH · 2017-04-22 04:00:07

seth wrote:

Do you use networkmanager and MAC_Address_Randomization?

No I use wpa_supplicant and dhcpcd to connect to the wireless. I have not set up MAC randomization and it does not seem like those services do that either.

seth · 2017-04-22 06:15:03

systool -vm iwlwifi

Since it seeems to happen right on disabling VHT, you could try passing "disable_11ac=1" to the module.

Rtzq0 · 2017-04-22 06:40:41

I just had an iwlwifi crash start happening as well with my most recent batch of updates. After the crash however I'm able to connect just fine (typically after restarting wifi within network manager. Don't quite understand what's going on here yet, but maybe two sets of errors will shed light?

http://sprunge.us/QEiM
http://sprunge.us/dSDD

seth · 2017-04-22 14:34:11

Different chip and firmware. You get a similar "Microcode SW error detected." but no nullpointer deref in the kernel module, ie. the driver "just" resets but doesn't crash.

Rtzq0 · 2017-04-22 18:15:42

seth wrote:

Different chip and firmware. You get a similar "Microcode SW error detected." but no nullpointer deref in the kernel module, ie. the driver "just" resets but doesn't crash.

That's 100% fair. Debugging misbehaving kernel modules is above my skill level presently. Where do I go to figure out how to get more/better logs and debug this properly?

seth · 2017-04-22 22:07:56

If the kernel isn't wrong, the problem is in the firmware, not the module.

https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/use … _debugging
https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/use … cy_aspects

ghostInTheSSH · 2017-04-24 16:12:59

seth wrote:

systool -vm iwlwifi
Since it seeems to happen right on disabling VHT, you could try passing "disable_11ac=1" to the module.

Just a question what does disabling VHT refer to and what would disable_11ac=1 do? From what I looked up it had to do with virtual networks and I am at a uni that takes advantage of virtual APs, would it affect that?

seth · 2017-04-24 16:33:54

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ac
The accesspoint in question doesn't annouce support for it anyway - that's why it's disabled.

Notice that there's absolutely no guarantee that this will fix anything, the following driver crash might be purely coincidental.

Arch Linux

#1 2017-04-21 17:41:13

iwlwifi crashes and causes other system resources to go with them

#2 2017-04-21 21:50:17

Re: iwlwifi crashes and causes other system resources to go with them

#3 2017-04-22 04:00:07

Re: iwlwifi crashes and causes other system resources to go with them

#4 2017-04-22 06:15:03

Re: iwlwifi crashes and causes other system resources to go with them

#5 2017-04-22 06:40:41

Re: iwlwifi crashes and causes other system resources to go with them

#6 2017-04-22 14:34:11

Re: iwlwifi crashes and causes other system resources to go with them

#7 2017-04-22 18:15:42

Re: iwlwifi crashes and causes other system resources to go with them

#8 2017-04-22 22:07:56

Re: iwlwifi crashes and causes other system resources to go with them

#9 2017-04-24 16:12:59

Re: iwlwifi crashes and causes other system resources to go with them

#10 2017-04-24 16:33:54

Re: iwlwifi crashes and causes other system resources to go with them

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