freebsd stable - Feb 2006 - frequent freeze on 6.0-STABLE at startup when loading iwi firmware

yesterday upgraded my laptop (Dell X1 with iwi wireless card)
running 6.0 to a fresh version of stable and the newest iwi-firmware,
and since then it frequently hangs at boot time right after
loading the iwi firmware - in fact, it booted ok only 2 times out
of the last 10.

The last msg i see on the console is

	Starting iwi [iwi0:bss]

and then i have to reset the machine.

With the previous firmware it never hung, but i don;t know
if it is the microcode or the loading mechanism that has changed.

The workaround i have found is to disable iwi in /etc/rc.conf
and then start it later, manually.
Obviously, this is suboptimal. I am not sure what to look at,
a race somewhere that could be fixed adding some 'sleep'
before or after loading the microcode ? something else ?

if that matters, there is an access point active where i boot,
and the config command tell the card the parameters to
associate with it.

cheers
luigi

Hi, Luigi -

I have been watching this too, due to an earlier problem with
iwi-firmware-2.4_2 which leads to spurious damaged-packet messages
("type 15"). According to Florent (flz@freebsd.org) on this page:
http://damien.bergamini.free.fr/ipw/forum/list.php?f=1, a new commit was
made to HEAD two days ago by Damien (damien.bergamini@free.fr). I
haven't applied it to my laptop yet to see if your freeze happens to me,
but those are the guys who are actively working on these problems.


--
Don Wilde    Org 01737    505-844-1126
Why do people in ship mutinies always ask for "better treatment?"
I'd
ask for a pinball machine, because with all that rocking back and forth
you'd probably be able to get a lot of free games. - Jack Handy