[GTALUG] Laptop (very) weirdness

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk at gtalug.org>

Good datapoints.  Also: good recommendations from others.
But more might be useful.

| Under Windows 10 all is normal (well, its form of normal).
| 
| Under Linux (current mint KDE)  at work, all seems ok.
| 
| At home, all hell breaks loose. The only difference is the wifi.

Try creating another login (user).

Then try to log in with this ID at home.

Do you have problems in this situation?

| After a normal login not only does networking not come up but the KDE menu
| bar doesn't display upon startup, all I have is the KDE wallpaper and a
| working xterm. Simple commands work but 'sudo bash' hangs.

I vaguely remember that some desktops want to ask networking what
their hostname is.  Or something like that.  I cannot actually connect
that with what you report, but perhaps it is a clue.

Can you try a different desktop?  I don't know how mint's version of
GDM works.  Fedora's lets you choose amongst the installed Desktop
Environments.

| If I try to shutdown the system hangs. ALT-F1 gives me some kind of massive
| dump starting with the lines:
| 
| BUG: unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at 000000000000011c
| IP iul_num_add_sta+0x49e/0x720 [iwlmvm]

That looks to be a problem in wireless handling.

iwl is a prefix for wireless things.
sta means "stations" in 802.11 -- clients.

iwlmvm is the driver for some Intel wireless interfaces.

Google will find some error reports with some similarity.  For some
odd reason, iul_num_add_sta gets no hits at all.  Is the message
accurate?

Google does find error reports about NULL pointer dereferences in this
driver.

| Can anyone make sense of why simply using a different wifi router would
| cause this? An inability to connect is one thing, but this is nuts.

Yes.  But lots of bugs are nuts.

| (And people ask me why I hesitate to recommend desktop Linux to
| non-techies...)

I find Windows worse.  All software has bugs.  And hardware too.

| Happy to bring it in to Tuesday's meeting if anyone can help...

But it will work there!

Good luck!