kern/142907: if_wpi unstable on ibm/lenovo x60 -- suspect firmware issue

[Craig Butler]

>Number:         142907
>Category:       kern
>Synopsis:       if_wpi unstable on ibm/lenovo x60 -- suspect firmware issue
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    freebsd-bugs
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          update
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Sun Jan 17 11:30:06 UTC 2010
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Craig Butler
>Release:        8.0-RELEASE-p1
>Organization:
lerwick.hopto.org
>Environment:
FreeBSD x60.lerwick.hopto.org 8.0-RELEASE-p1 FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE-p1 #0: Tue Dec 22 00:05:16 GMT 2009     root at x60.lerwick.hopto.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC_WITH_RADIX  i386
>Description:
I have experienced a lot of issues with the old wpi firmware as included in the src tree, connectivity lost fairly quickly in a WPA2 environment.

I found that I had to keep restarting /etc/rc.d/netif even sometimes even reloading if_wpi to get connectivity restored.
>How-To-Repeat:
Connect to a WPA2(or maybe even WEP) wifi.  It works for a bit but then it will drop the connection silently, unable to ping out to the gateway or get connectivity to the network
>Fix:
Firmware upgrade; I have found the following firmware to be a lot more stable... lifted from the intel site and uuencoded, appropriate parts of /usr/src updated.

Still not 100% but a lot better, a lot less drop outs.

As patch is bigger than 100KB I have uploaded it to my web server;
http://lerwick.hopto.org/wpi.patch

>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: