I am running Natty Narwhal on a Dell Vostro (I don't know the model number). The machine will hang (freeze) hard a random time (0-5 minutes) after I either remove the AC power cable or disable wifi using the switch at the front of the machine.
Here are some details:
- Hard freeze means even the mouse cursor doesn't move. I can't switch virtual terminals using "CTRL+ALT Fn".
- I have not tried to ssh in from another machine, or using a serial console.
- This is independent of the graphics driver (it's an nvidia card)
- It's a Broadcom card, but I have NOT tried the proprietary drivers (wifi works)
- If both AC power and wifi are on, but I switch off the wifi, it will soon hang.
- If I boot up without the AC power, it will hang within a few minutes of boot
- If I boot up with the wifi switched off, it will NOT hang, unless I pull out the AC power.
The frustrating thing is that last week I googled around and found someone with very similar problems (and they had a solution) but now I can't find it again. This person claimed that his machine also didn't crash if he plugged in an ethernet cable, and then unplagged the AC power. I have not tested this.
After pulling out the AC power, there is no change to the outputs of
- lspci -nnvv,
- lsmod, or
- iwconfig.
Unless someone asks, I will not pollute this site with the complete output of all these commands; here is a selection:
iwconfig (full output):
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
vboxnet0 no wireless extensions.
virbr0 no wireless extensions.
wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=0 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
lspci -nnvv (only the broadcom secton)
12:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4727] (rev 01)
Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0010]
Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 17
Region 0: Memory at fb400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: brcm80211
Kernel modules: brcm80211
lsmod | grep 211
brcm80211 748941 0
mac80211 294370 1 brcm80211
cfg80211 178528 2 brcm80211,mac80211