[NCLUG] orinoco monitor mode problems: ksoftirqd_CPU0 CPU consumption & kernel: eth0: Error -5 writing packet to BAP

[Anthony Earl]

Hi,
    I've searched Google and tried various things that I'll explain 
below but I've reached a point where I can't find an answer.  My basic 
problem is that I find the following happens when I enter monitor mode 
(via iwpriv or airsnort):

ksoftirqd_CPU0 starts to consume over 90% of the CPU usage and syslog says:

Jul 20 10:54:11 zoopia kernel: device eth0 entered promiscuous mode
Jul 20 10:54:16 zoopia kernel: eth0: Error -5 writing packet to BAP
Jul 20 10:54:47 zoopia last message repeated 22000 times
Jul 20 10:55:48 zoopia last message repeated 43918 times
Jul 20 10:56:49 zoopia last message repeated 43872 times
Jul 20 10:57:50 zoopia last message repeated 43877 times
Jul 20 10:58:51 zoopia last message repeated 42768 times
etc.

I'm presuming these symptoms are not a good thing.  I also guess (a 
complete guess since I've not used it before) that is why airsnort will 
collect several hundred thousand packets but then Segmentation fault.  

Any suggestions for what to try next would really be appreciated.

I'm running Debian Testing with a 2.4.21 kernel on an HP Omnibook500 
with a Lucent Orinico Gold card.  I have my chosen set of kernel configs 
but the only patch upon the standard Debian kernel source is the 
orinoco-0.13b-patched.diff 
<http://airsnort.shmoo.com/orinoco-0.13b-patched.diff>.  I recently made 
a set of config changes to support iptables but I'm not running those 
explicitly during these activities.

The Gold card was using the 7.28 firmware so I upgraded to the 7.52 
having read the 9/25/02 update at 
http://airsnort.shmoo.com/orinocoinfo.html.  

Output from dmesg for loading the driver is:
hermes.c: 4 Dec 2002 David Gibson <hermes at gibson.dropbear.id.au>
orinoco.c 0.13b (David Gibson <hermes at gibson.dropbear.id.au> and others)
orinoco_cs.c 0.13b (David Gibson <hermes at gibson.dropbear.id.au> and others)
eth0: Station identity 001f:0001:0007:0034
eth0: Looks like a Lucent/Agere firmware version 7.52
eth0: Ad-hoc demo mode supported
eth0: IEEE standard IBSS ad-hoc mode supported
eth0: WEP supported, 104-bit key
eth0: MAC address 00:02:2D:52:8A:70
eth0: Station name "HERMES I"
eth0: ready
eth0: index 0x01: Vcc 5.0, irq 3, io 0x0100-0x013f
eth0: New link status: Connected (0001)

Output from sudo iwpriv eth0 is:
eth0      Available private ioctl :
          force_reset      (8BE0) : set   0       & get   0     
          card_reset       (8BE1) : set   0       & get   0     
          set_port3        (8BE2) : set   1 int   & get   0     
          get_port3        (8BE3) : set   0       & get   1 int 
          set_preamble     (8BE4) : set   1 int   & get   0     
          get_preamble     (8BE5) : set   0       & get   1 int 
          set_ibssport     (8BE6) : set   1 int   & get   0     
          get_ibssport     (8BE7) : set   0       & get   1 int 
          monitor          (8BE8) : set   2 int   & get   0     
          dump_recs        (8BFF) : set   0       & get   0  

Thanks for your time,
    Anthony.