I am testing using two machines. They have identical software and hardware, kernel 2.6.16 and Atheros 5212.
One is configured as an AP and the other one as a STATION
They both have bridges defined and the wireless interfaces are inside the bridges. The AP only has one interface. The STATION has two interfaces: the wireless and a regular Ethernet. Here is the output of brctl show on both:
AP:
/>brctl show
bridge name bridge id STP enabled interfaces
br0 000a.0060b3071bb6 no wlan0
STA:
/>brctl show
bridge name bridge id STP enabled interfaces
br0 000a.0060b3071bb6 no wlan0
eth0
The wireless interfaces both have wds set to 1 or bridging would not work.
The problem is that the kernel crashes on both within a few hours. The Station usually crashes first.
One additional piece of information (I am also creating a new ticket for it) is that the bridge mac address always acquires the mac of the first interface you put in. Thus, packets initiated by either machine have the corresponding wireless mac address as the source address. This causes the driver to complaint on a scenario that is acceptable for every packet that goes out. This is the warning: wlan0: received packet with own address as source address:
Here is the driver initialization data and the kernel crash log:
Driver initialization data:
ath_hal: module license 'Proprietary' taints kernel.
ath_hal: 0.9.18.0 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, RF5413)
wlan: 0.8.4.2 (0.9.3.3)
ath_pci: 0.9.4.5 (0.9.3.3)
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 0000:00:14.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 0000:00:10.2
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 0000:00:10.3
ath_rate_sample: 1.2 (0.9.3.3)
wifi0: 11b rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps
wifi0: 11g rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps 6Mbps 9Mbps 12Mbps 18Mbps 24Mbps 36Mbps 48Mbps 54Mbps
wifi0: H/W encryption support: WEP AES AES_CCM TKIP
wifi0: mac 7.8 phy 4.5 radio 5.6
wifi0: Use hw queue 1 for WME_AC_BE traffic
wifi0: Use hw queue 0 for WME_AC_BK traffic
wifi0: Use hw queue 2 for WME_AC_VI traffic
wifi0: Use hw queue 3 for WME_AC_VO traffic
wifi0: Use hw queue 8 for CAB traffic
wifi0: Use hw queue 9 for beacons
wifi0: Atheros 5212: mem=0xe8000000, irq=11
wlan: mac acl policy registered
Kernel Oops:
Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 00000000
printing eip:
c013b5f1
*pde = 00000000
Oops: 0000 [#1]
PREEMPT
Modules linked in: hwmon_vid wlan_acl wlan_scan_sta ath_rate_sample ath_pci wlan ath_hal firmware_class loop aes_i586
CPU: 0
EIP: 0060:[<c013b5f1>] Tainted: P VLI
EFLAGS: 00010082 (2.6.16 #49)
EIP is at kfree+0x23/0x44
eax: c1bf21e0 ebx: 00000046 ecx: cc999000 edx: 00000000
esi: 1f90ffff edi: 00000006 ebp: cc8c2260 esp: c0415edc
ds: 007b es: 007b ss: 0068
Process swapper (pid: 0, threadinfo=c0414000 task=c03b0a00)
Stack: <0>00000046 cc999000 cf21d260 d034ceb2 1f90ffff 00000046 c0414000 cc999000
d03c6dc9 cc999000 cc999000 cc999000 cc8c2be8 cf21d260 d034cf62 cc999000
cc8c2260 d03c6e09 cc999000 cc8c2260 cc999000 00000000 cc999000 d034dc63
Call Trace:
[<d034ceb2>] node_cleanup+0xb5/0x156 [wlan]
[<d03c6dc9>] ath_node_cleanup+0x250/0x26b [ath_pci]
[<d034cf62>] node_free+0xf/0x52 [wlan]
[<d03c6e09>] ath_node_free+0x25/0x33 [ath_pci]
[<d034dc63>] _ieee80211_free_node+0xaf/0xb5 [wlan]
[<d034dc95>] ieee80211_free_node+0x2c/0x62 [wlan]
[<d03c7997>] ath_rx_tasklet+0x347/0x4a5 [ath_pci]
[<c0113753>] tasklet_action+0x34/0x53
[<c0113530>] __do_softirq+0x34/0x7d
[<c011359b>] do_softirq+0x22/0x26
[<c0113635>] irq_exit+0x29/0x34
[<c0103d7f>] do_IRQ+0x1e/0x24
[<c010281a>] common_interrupt+0x1a/0x20
[<c0100ac7>] default_idle+0x2b/0x53
[<c0100b46>] cpu_idle+0x43/0x5e
[<c041660c>] start_kernel+0x180/0x182
Code: 89 03 56 9d 5b 5e 5f c3 57 56 53 8b 74 24 10 85 f6 74 35 9c 5f fa 8d 86 00 00 00 40 c1 e8 0c c1 e0 05 03 05 50 a7 44 c0 8b 50 18 <8b> 1a 8b 03 3b 43 04 72 0b 53 52 e8 27 fe ff ff 58 8b 03 5a 89
<0>Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception in interrupt
