Subject: Regression 2.6.36 - driver rtl8169 crashes kernel, triggered by user app

From: Michael Monnerie <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2010 21:22:22 +0100

This is the 3rd time I send this, and I did not get any answer.
I thought *regressions* are a bad thing that would be handled quickly?
Maybe this helps: *SHITTY DRIVER NOT WORKING ANYMORE*

Dear list, I've hunted down a bug which does *NOT* occur in kernel 
2.6.34.7-0.5-desktop from openSUSE 11.3, but crashes stock kernel 2.6.36 
triggered by a user!

It's actually very simple. From my desktop (kernel 2.6.36) I "cd" to an 
NFS4 share, where a xz compressed image of Win7-64.iso.xz is located.

# cd /q/iso-images

and then I try to uncompress it there (as user, not root!):

# xz -kv Win7-64.iso.xz

With kernel 2.6.34.7-0.5-desktop, this runs with ~41MiB/s without 
problems.

With kernel 2.6.36, it runs at ~26MiB/s, and while doing so, dmesg shows 
a lot of noise about r8169 complaining:
http://zmi.at/x/kernel2.6.36-crash86.jpg

Here are 2 pictures of different crashes:
http://zmi.at/x/kernel2.6.36-crash84.jpg
http://zmi.at/x/kernel2.6.36-crash85.jpg

Neither the dmesg-messages nor the crash happens with kernel 
2.6.34.7-0.5-desktop as delivered by openSUSE 11.3, but it always fully 
crashes 2.6.36. I've retried about 10 times, it *never* finished to 
uncompress the ~3GB image. At around 500-1000MB the kernel was gone.

I'm sure someone knows how to fix it. :-)

-- 
mit freundlichen Grüssen,
Michael Monnerie, Ing. BSc

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