[GTALUG] Laptop (very) weirdness

[Evan Leibovitch]

Update:

Lennart's pointers have been very helpful in getting to the root of the
problem.

I'm now seeing that even the shiniest-new version of Mint uses 4.10 and
that Ubuntu 17.10 is only at 4.13. The new kernel can be installed on
either through PPAs. It's a little work but far better than crashing.

I have tried to experiment with different wifi frequencies and frequency
widths at the router side, so far with no improvement.



On 14 December 2017 at 19:45, Evan Leibovitch <evan at telly.org> wrote:

> Thanks!
> That gives me something to work on.
>
> - Evan
>
>
> On 14 December 2017 at 17:00, Lennart Sorensen <
> lsorense at csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Dec 10, 2017 at 07:26:03PM -0500, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
>> > My dual-boot  Asus laptop now exhibits very strange behaviour.
>> >
>> > 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.
>> >
>> > 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.
>> >
>> > 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]
>> >
>> > 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.
>> >
>> > (And people ask me why I hesitate to recommend desktop Linux to
>> > non-techies...)
>> >
>> > Happy to bring it in to Tuesday's meeting if anyone can help...
>> >
>> > - Evan (on mobile)
>>
>> Sounds a bit like this:
>>
>> https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=195299
>>
>> So if it is that it should be fixed in 4.14 kernel.  Not sure what
>> current mint uses.  A search seems to indicate it may be 4.10.
>>
>> It sounds like the trigger is a router using an illegal channel width
>> on some channels on 5GHz.  At least that was what one person found.
>>
>> --
>> Len Sorensen
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Evan Leibovitch
> Toronto, Canada
>
> Em: evan at telly dot org
> Sk: evanleibovitch
> Tw: el56
>
>


-- 
Evan Leibovitch
Toronto, Canada

Em: evan at telly dot org
Sk: evanleibovitch
Tw: el56
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