hifn(4) causing system lockup

[Sam Leffler]

Vivek Khera wrote:
> 
> On Mar 17, 2008, at 4:05 PM, Sascha Klauder wrote:
> 
>> I've recently upgraded my 6.2-STABLE workstation to RELENG_7,
>> and I'm now experiencing system lockups that seem to be caused
>> by the hifn(4) driver.
>>
>> I've got a Soekris vpn1401 card to help with GELI disk en-
>> cryption.  Reading from a GELI volume is causing the system to
>> freeze completely, which does not happen if software crypto is
>> used (i.e. hifn.ko not loaded).  I can't enter kernel debugger
>> (ctrl+alt+esc doesn't work anymore) and my (remote) kgdb-fu
>> isn't up to par anyway.
> 
> I've had the exact same kind of issue with the vpn1401 PCI card in a 
> Dell box for my firewall running pfSense (at the tie it was based on 
> FreeBSD 6.1 I believe).  It would lock up the firewall within 2 hours to 
> 4 days of uptime.  Once we removed the card, no lockups.  Soekris never 
> responded to my questions about such behavior.
> 
> In contrast, their mini-PCI cards I have installed on some WRAP boards 
> never lockup using the same software.
> 
> I blame the card.

Hifn contributed driver changes that purportedly corrected some issues 
that might be related.  Unfortunately I've had no time to integrate them 
(it was provided as a single (huge) patch w/o any explanation).  I 
called several times for someone to take it over but noone's stepped up. 
  If you want to work through it contact me offline.

	Sam