Improvement in b43 on BCM4312 (14e4:4315)

Improvement in b43 on BCM4312 (14e4:4315)

[Larry Finger]

Rafał and John,

I was doing routine testing today on 3.0-rc4 kernels built from wireless-testing 
and Linus's mainline git tree. To my surprise, I noticed an important difference 
on the netbook with a 14e4:4315 BCM4312 802.11b/g LP PHY device. Although b43 
would work OK with light loads, it would always fail at heavy loads. Sometimes, 
it would get the "Out of order TX status" failure, and sometimes it would just 
lose the connection. As that machine is quite slow, I maintain its kernel source 
on an NFS volume exported by an x86_64 machine with fast CPUs and relatively 
fast disks.

Until today, the BCM4312 had never been able to complete the "make 
modules_install" step needed to get a new kernel on the netbook, and would fail 
in the middle of copying the modules from the NFS volume to the local 
/lib/modules tree. After installing the wireless-testing 3.0-rc4 kernel using 
rtl8187 as the network driver, I was quite surprised to find that the new kernel 
could use b43 to install the new kernel from Linus's tree. After booting that 
kernel, the failure returned.

I then made other load tests on the w-t kernel without failures.

There are no real differences between the b43 sources in the two kernels. There 
are lots of changes associated with the bus reorganization; however these do not 
seem to cause the problem.

Only one of the patches to ssb seems to be the "fix", namely commit eb40e3e8 
entitled "drivers/ssb/driver_chipcommon_pmu.c: uninitilized warning" by Connor 
Hansen. I need to do more tests on this patch, but the kernel from Linus's tree 
could reinstall itself when I added this patch. I see no indication in the 
commit message regarding pushing this one to stable, but I think it should go 
upstream to mainline and the stable trees.

Larry

Improvement in b43 on BCM4312 (14e4:4315)

[Larry Finger]

Rafa? and John,

I was doing routine testing today on 3.0-rc4 kernels built from wireless-testing 
and Linus's mainline git tree. To my surprise, I noticed an important difference 
on the netbook with a 14e4:4315 BCM4312 802.11b/g LP PHY device. Although b43 
would work OK with light loads, it would always fail at heavy loads. Sometimes, 
it would get the "Out of order TX status" failure, and sometimes it would just 
lose the connection. As that machine is quite slow, I maintain its kernel source 
on an NFS volume exported by an x86_64 machine with fast CPUs and relatively 
fast disks.

Until today, the BCM4312 had never been able to complete the "make 
modules_install" step needed to get a new kernel on the netbook, and would fail 
in the middle of copying the modules from the NFS volume to the local 
/lib/modules tree. After installing the wireless-testing 3.0-rc4 kernel using 
rtl8187 as the network driver, I was quite surprised to find that the new kernel 
could use b43 to install the new kernel from Linus's tree. After booting that 
kernel, the failure returned.

I then made other load tests on the w-t kernel without failures.

There are no real differences between the b43 sources in the two kernels. There 
are lots of changes associated with the bus reorganization; however these do not 
seem to cause the problem.

Only one of the patches to ssb seems to be the "fix", namely commit eb40e3e8 
entitled "drivers/ssb/driver_chipcommon_pmu.c: uninitilized warning" by Connor 
Hansen. I need to do more tests on this patch, but the kernel from Linus's tree 
could reinstall itself when I added this patch. I see no indication in the 
commit message regarding pushing this one to stable, but I think it should go 
upstream to mainline and the stable trees.

Larry

Re: Improvement in b43 on BCM4312 (14e4:4315)

[Rafał Miłecki]

W dniu 23 czerwca 2011 22:30 użytkownik Larry Finger
<Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net> napisał:
> Rafał and John,
>
> I was doing routine testing today on 3.0-rc4 kernels built from
> wireless-testing and Linus's mainline git tree. To my surprise, I noticed an
> important difference on the netbook with a 14e4:4315 BCM4312 802.11b/g LP
> PHY device. Although b43 would work OK with light loads, it would always
> fail at heavy loads. Sometimes, it would get the "Out of order TX status"
> failure, and sometimes it would just lose the connection. As that machine is
> quite slow, I maintain its kernel source on an NFS volume exported by an
> x86_64 machine with fast CPUs and relatively fast disks.
>
> Until today, the BCM4312 had never been able to complete the "make
> modules_install" step needed to get a new kernel on the netbook, and would
> fail in the middle of copying the modules from the NFS volume to the local
> /lib/modules tree. After installing the wireless-testing 3.0-rc4 kernel
> using rtl8187 as the network driver, I was quite surprised to find that the
> new kernel could use b43 to install the new kernel from Linus's tree. After
> booting that kernel, the failure returned.
>
> I then made other load tests on the w-t kernel without failures.
>
> There are no real differences between the b43 sources in the two kernels.
> There are lots of changes associated with the bus reorganization; however
> these do not seem to cause the problem.
>
> Only one of the patches to ssb seems to be the "fix", namely commit eb40e3e8
> entitled "drivers/ssb/driver_chipcommon_pmu.c: uninitilized warning" by
> Connor Hansen. I need to do more tests on this patch, but the kernel from
> Linus's tree could reinstall itself when I added this patch. I see no
> indication in the commit message regarding pushing this one to stable, but I
> think it should go upstream to mainline and the stable trees.

It does not look like possible fix to me. Plus it sounds like false
warning from compiler.

Take a look at relation between:
1) updown_tab and updown_tab_size
2) depend_tab and depend_tab_size

Second value (*_size) is never used when first one is NULL. In switch
we don't change updown_tab or depend_tab. They are both NULL, so
updown_tab_size and depend_tab_size should never be checked at all.

Could you do more tests about this, please?

-- 
Rafał

Improvement in b43 on BCM4312 (14e4:4315)

[Rafał Miłecki]

W dniu 23 czerwca 2011 22:30 u?ytkownik Larry Finger
<Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net> napisa?:
> Rafa? and John,
>
> I was doing routine testing today on 3.0-rc4 kernels built from
> wireless-testing and Linus's mainline git tree. To my surprise, I noticed an
> important difference on the netbook with a 14e4:4315 BCM4312 802.11b/g LP
> PHY device. Although b43 would work OK with light loads, it would always
> fail at heavy loads. Sometimes, it would get the "Out of order TX status"
> failure, and sometimes it would just lose the connection. As that machine is
> quite slow, I maintain its kernel source on an NFS volume exported by an
> x86_64 machine with fast CPUs and relatively fast disks.
>
> Until today, the BCM4312 had never been able to complete the "make
> modules_install" step needed to get a new kernel on the netbook, and would
> fail in the middle of copying the modules from the NFS volume to the local
> /lib/modules tree. After installing the wireless-testing 3.0-rc4 kernel
> using rtl8187 as the network driver, I was quite surprised to find that the
> new kernel could use b43 to install the new kernel from Linus's tree. After
> booting that kernel, the failure returned.
>
> I then made other load tests on the w-t kernel without failures.
>
> There are no real differences between the b43 sources in the two kernels.
> There are lots of changes associated with the bus reorganization; however
> these do not seem to cause the problem.
>
> Only one of the patches to ssb seems to be the "fix", namely commit eb40e3e8
> entitled "drivers/ssb/driver_chipcommon_pmu.c: uninitilized warning" by
> Connor Hansen. I need to do more tests on this patch, but the kernel from
> Linus's tree could reinstall itself when I added this patch. I see no
> indication in the commit message regarding pushing this one to stable, but I
> think it should go upstream to mainline and the stable trees.

It does not look like possible fix to me. Plus it sounds like false
warning from compiler.

Take a look at relation between:
1) updown_tab and updown_tab_size
2) depend_tab and depend_tab_size

Second value (*_size) is never used when first one is NULL. In switch
we don't change updown_tab or depend_tab. They are both NULL, so
updown_tab_size and depend_tab_size should never be checked at all.

Could you do more tests about this, please?

-- 
Rafa?

Re: Improvement in b43 on BCM4312 (14e4:4315)

[Michael Büsch]

On Sun, 26 Jun 2011 22:48:59 +0200
Rafał Miłecki <zajec5@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Only one of the patches to ssb seems to be the "fix", namely commit eb40e3e8
> > entitled "drivers/ssb/driver_chipcommon_pmu.c: uninitilized warning" by
> > Connor Hansen. I need to do more tests on this patch, but the kernel from
> > Linus's tree could reinstall itself when I added this patch. I see no
> > indication in the commit message regarding pushing this one to stable, but I
> > think it should go upstream to mainline and the stable trees.
> 
> It does not look like possible fix to me. Plus it sounds like false
> warning from compiler.
> 
> Take a look at relation between:
> 1) updown_tab and updown_tab_size
> 2) depend_tab and depend_tab_size

The patch in question does nothing but silence a bogus compiler warning.
No logical change to the code.

Improvement in b43 on BCM4312 (14e4:4315)

[Michael Büsch]

On Sun, 26 Jun 2011 22:48:59 +0200
Rafa? Mi?ecki <zajec5@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Only one of the patches to ssb seems to be the "fix", namely commit eb40e3e8
> > entitled "drivers/ssb/driver_chipcommon_pmu.c: uninitilized warning" by
> > Connor Hansen. I need to do more tests on this patch, but the kernel from
> > Linus's tree could reinstall itself when I added this patch. I see no
> > indication in the commit message regarding pushing this one to stable, but I
> > think it should go upstream to mainline and the stable trees.
> 
> It does not look like possible fix to me. Plus it sounds like false
> warning from compiler.
> 
> Take a look at relation between:
> 1) updown_tab and updown_tab_size
> 2) depend_tab and depend_tab_size

The patch in question does nothing but silence a bogus compiler warning.
No logical change to the code.

Re: Improvement in b43 on BCM4312 (14e4:4315)

[Rafał Miłecki]

W dniu 26 czerwca 2011 22:48 użytkownik Rafał Miłecki
<zajec5@gmail.com> napisał:
> W dniu 23 czerwca 2011 22:30 użytkownik Larry Finger
> <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net> napisał:
>> Rafał and John,
>>
>> I was doing routine testing today on 3.0-rc4 kernels built from
>> wireless-testing and Linus's mainline git tree. To my surprise, I noticed an
>> important difference on the netbook with a 14e4:4315 BCM4312 802.11b/g LP
>> PHY device. Although b43 would work OK with light loads, it would always
>> fail at heavy loads. Sometimes, it would get the "Out of order TX status"
>> failure, and sometimes it would just lose the connection. As that machine is
>> quite slow, I maintain its kernel source on an NFS volume exported by an
>> x86_64 machine with fast CPUs and relatively fast disks.
>>
>> Until today, the BCM4312 had never been able to complete the "make
>> modules_install" step needed to get a new kernel on the netbook, and would
>> fail in the middle of copying the modules from the NFS volume to the local
>> /lib/modules tree. After installing the wireless-testing 3.0-rc4 kernel
>> using rtl8187 as the network driver, I was quite surprised to find that the
>> new kernel could use b43 to install the new kernel from Linus's tree. After
>> booting that kernel, the failure returned.
>>
>> I then made other load tests on the w-t kernel without failures.
>>
>> There are no real differences between the b43 sources in the two kernels.
>> There are lots of changes associated with the bus reorganization; however
>> these do not seem to cause the problem.
>>
>> Only one of the patches to ssb seems to be the "fix", namely commit eb40e3e8
>> entitled "drivers/ssb/driver_chipcommon_pmu.c: uninitilized warning" by
>> Connor Hansen. I need to do more tests on this patch, but the kernel from
>> Linus's tree could reinstall itself when I added this patch. I see no
>> indication in the commit message regarding pushing this one to stable, but I
>> think it should go upstream to mainline and the stable trees.
>
> It does not look like possible fix to me. Plus it sounds like false
> warning from compiler.
>
> Take a look at relation between:
> 1) updown_tab and updown_tab_size
> 2) depend_tab and depend_tab_size
>
> Second value (*_size) is never used when first one is NULL. In switch
> we don't change updown_tab or depend_tab. They are both NULL, so
> updown_tab_size and depend_tab_size should never be checked at all.
>
> Could you do more tests about this, please?

Larry, please, don't let this fix hide. As you can know, I've some
problems with my BCM4312. Would like to hear what improved support for
yours.

-- 
Rafał

Improvement in b43 on BCM4312 (14e4:4315)

[Rafał Miłecki]

W dniu 26 czerwca 2011 22:48 u?ytkownik Rafa? Mi?ecki
<zajec5@gmail.com> napisa?:
> W dniu 23 czerwca 2011 22:30 u?ytkownik Larry Finger
> <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net> napisa?:
>> Rafa? and John,
>>
>> I was doing routine testing today on 3.0-rc4 kernels built from
>> wireless-testing and Linus's mainline git tree. To my surprise, I noticed an
>> important difference on the netbook with a 14e4:4315 BCM4312 802.11b/g LP
>> PHY device. Although b43 would work OK with light loads, it would always
>> fail at heavy loads. Sometimes, it would get the "Out of order TX status"
>> failure, and sometimes it would just lose the connection. As that machine is
>> quite slow, I maintain its kernel source on an NFS volume exported by an
>> x86_64 machine with fast CPUs and relatively fast disks.
>>
>> Until today, the BCM4312 had never been able to complete the "make
>> modules_install" step needed to get a new kernel on the netbook, and would
>> fail in the middle of copying the modules from the NFS volume to the local
>> /lib/modules tree. After installing the wireless-testing 3.0-rc4 kernel
>> using rtl8187 as the network driver, I was quite surprised to find that the
>> new kernel could use b43 to install the new kernel from Linus's tree. After
>> booting that kernel, the failure returned.
>>
>> I then made other load tests on the w-t kernel without failures.
>>
>> There are no real differences between the b43 sources in the two kernels.
>> There are lots of changes associated with the bus reorganization; however
>> these do not seem to cause the problem.
>>
>> Only one of the patches to ssb seems to be the "fix", namely commit eb40e3e8
>> entitled "drivers/ssb/driver_chipcommon_pmu.c: uninitilized warning" by
>> Connor Hansen. I need to do more tests on this patch, but the kernel from
>> Linus's tree could reinstall itself when I added this patch. I see no
>> indication in the commit message regarding pushing this one to stable, but I
>> think it should go upstream to mainline and the stable trees.
>
> It does not look like possible fix to me. Plus it sounds like false
> warning from compiler.
>
> Take a look at relation between:
> 1) updown_tab and updown_tab_size
> 2) depend_tab and depend_tab_size
>
> Second value (*_size) is never used when first one is NULL. In switch
> we don't change updown_tab or depend_tab. They are both NULL, so
> updown_tab_size and depend_tab_size should never be checked at all.
>
> Could you do more tests about this, please?

Larry, please, don't let this fix hide. As you can know, I've some
problems with my BCM4312. Would like to hear what improved support for
yours.

-- 
Rafa?