[Tfug] Had an interesting little "partial crash" just now...

[erich]

OK,
    You haven't completely carried thru with your testing. You must put the
WIFI card back the way it was and show that the problem has returned.

     WIFI cards are not lightbulbs: Like any IC-populated device their
service life is probably longer than yours. Is there evidence of some
catastrophe? Are there burn marks on it? Does it smell funny?. I'm worried
that the old WIFI card may have been damaged by the duct tape.
You can get ESD from duct tape.

                                                                                                             
Erich

Jim March wrote:
> Hi all, had an adventure you might find interesting.
>
> I lost WiFi access earlier in the afternoon.  Shrug.  No biggie - put
> my cellular modem in, kept on truckin'.
>
> Rebooted towards the evening for other reasons and when I came back
> up, Chrome and flash player were slow as molasses...stuttering in
> basic Youtube videos even once I let them spool all the way in.  Odd.
> My CPU activity meter was going insane.
>
> I run 32bit Ubuntu Lucid with the latest 10.1 flash player...it's been
> fine of late.  I have a low-grade Intel "Pentium Dual-core" CPU.
>
> I figured it was the latest beta chrome update gone wrong.  Started up
> Firefox - same thing.  Huh?  Loaded and ran Swiftfox...no different.
> Opera?  Nope.
>
> Ran System Monitor, told it to show all processes, listed in order of
> CPU usage.  Something called "phy0" was bouncing up and down but
> showing a lot of it's time at 94% or more usage.  Well that's not
> right.
>
> Googled around for phy0 and why it might be snacking on the CPU.  Not
> much luck.  Synaptic didn't show it as a package.  So...has to be some
> kind of kernel driver, right?
>
> The hits I did for it mostly linked to WiFi access...both Broadcom and
> my Atheros-based card.  Hrm.
>
> So...something in the kernel that has something to do with WiFi has
> gone bonkers.  And I lost WiFi connectivity hours before that.
>
> Arright...I shut it down, pulled the WiFi card itself (internal
> mini-PCI-express).  Duct-taped the ends of the antenna wires down so
> they don't short something on the mobo.  Fire it back up and
> everything is 100% ('cept for no WiFi).
>
> Full credit to Ubuntu Lucid and it's upstream bits: despite what
> appears to be a fried WiFi card, it didn't crash.  And it only took me
> about 45min to sort out.
>
> The dead card was a "G" - I'll prolly spend $25 on an "N" at SWS.  No biggie.
>
> I thought it was an interesting testament to the toughness of the Penguin.
>
> Jim
>
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