wpa_supplicant craps out under heavy load

[Justin P. Mattock]

Bill Davidsen wrote:
> Justin P. Mattock wrote:
>> I've noticed this with ubuntu about a year ago,
>> and now I see this with redhat(fedora)
>>
>> under wpa_supplicant.log I see:
>>
>> CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx completed (auth)
>> [id=0 id_str=]
>> CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED - Disconnect event - remove keys
>> Trying to associate with xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx (SSID='XX' freq=2422 MHz)
>> Association request to the driver failed
>> Associated with xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
>> CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx completed
>> (reauth) [id=0 id_str=]
>> CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED - Disconnect event - remove keys
>> Trying to associate with xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx (SSID='XX' freq=2422 MHz)
>> Association request to the driver failed
>> Associated with xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
>> CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx completed
>> (reauth) [id=0 id_str=]
>> CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED - Disconnect event - remove keys
>> Trying to associate with xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx (SSID='XX' freq=2422 MHz)
>> Association request to the driver failed
>> Associated with xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
>>
>>
>> the above is caused probably all the time, but not noticeable until
>> heavy load.
>>
>> The system becomes vary sluggish, hulu craps out, radio craps out
>> (not fun)...
>>
> When you say heavy load, do you mean heavy network load (traffic) or 
> system load (CPU)? I think there are timeouts in the key exchange 
> which might fail if the system were really loaded. Then again that 
> probably wouldn't effect established connections. The snippet below 
> looks as if the connection was dropping and resetting, may be a driver 
> issue.
>
>> After disabling NetworkManager and compiling wpa_supplicant from
>> the source(using the default .config they supply for compiling)
>>
>> wpa_supplicant looks like this:
>>
>> [name at name wpa_supplicant]$
>> sudo 
>> /home/name/Sources/wpa_supplicant-0.6.9/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant 
>> -Dwext -ieth1 -c /home/name/wpa
>> CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-RESULTS Trying to associate with xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx 
>> (SSID='XX' freq=2422 MHz)
>> ioctl[SIOCSIWAP]: Device or resource busy
>> Association request to the driver failed
>> Associated with xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
>> CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx completed (auth)
>> [id=0 id_str=]
>>
>> still shows some errors, but I'm able to stream music, plus watch movies
>> without having a sluggish system, nor having stuckage of internet.
>>
>> I would file a bug, but there probably already is, since this is
>> something I've seen for some time now right!
>>
>> Justin P. Mattock
>>
> Using a humble old Celeron laptop and FC11, doing
>   ssh host2 "dd bs=5k count=50k" </dev/zero >/dev/null
> doesn't show much CPU in use.
>
> Casual test, one line and 'top' to see who uses CPU.
>
> Thanks for the bug#, will follow there.
>
heavy load as in internet traffic.
(could be high cpu load as well).

  As for the whole  wpa_supplicant crapping out thing,
I did experience sluggishness  but after looking into it
I think it was readahead. i.g. compiling libc from git went good,
but after a reboot readahead did not like that(segfaulted and gave the
same slow sluggishness as I experienced earlier before a libc compile 
and install).

After uninstalling readahead the system seems to be stable, but I 
probably will hit that
wpa_supplicant thing(if I don't use the source version I compiled).

 From what I remember when this happened  when I used debian/ubuntu I 
ended up downgrading
wpa_supplicant, and the key exchange reacted as it should(at the moment 
I dont have a wpa network
but it is happening without encryption as well).

Now worries, just one of those things..

Justin P. Mattock