ath9k has a race on putting the chip into network sleep and
having registers read from hardware. The race occurs because
although ath9k_ps_restore() locks its own callers it makes use
of some variables which get altered in the driver at different
code paths. The variables are the ps_enabled and ps_flags.
This is easily reprodicible in large network environments when
roaming with the wpa_supplicant simple bgscan. You'd get some
0xdeadbeef read out on certain registers such as:
ath: timeout (100000 us) on reg 0x806c: 0xdeadbeef & 0x01f00000 != 0x00000000
ath: RX failed to go idle in 10 ms RXSM=0xdeadbeef
The fix is to protect the ath9k_config(hw, IEEE80211_CONF_CHANGE_PS)
calls with a spin_lock_irqsave() which will disable contendors for
these variables from interrupt context, timers, re-entry from mac80211
on the same callback, and most importantly from ath9k_ps_restore()
which is the only call which will put the device into network sleep.
There are quite a few threads and bug reports on these a few of them are:
Cc: stable@kernel.org Cc: Paul Stewart <pstew@google.com> Cc: Amod Bodas <amod.bodas@atheros.com> Signed-off-by: Luis R. Rodriguez <lrodriguez@atheros.com> Signed-off-by: John W. Linville <linville@tuxdriver.com>