When mac80211 declares connection loss against this AP (typically driven
by inactivity-deauth or beacon-loss), the userspace reauth that follows
sometimes enters a long blackhole: the AP responds to auth with success
but defers assoc with the 802.11v "assoc comeback" timer; ohm retries
faster than the comeback grants permission; the AP eventually fires an
unprotected deauth-reason-6 ("Class 2 frame received from non-
authenticated station"), and recovery only completes via cross-SSID or
cross-channel fallback. Receipts: ~86 s blackhole observed in the
phase-7 rep on 2026-05-07 02:42, with three subsequent BSSIDs returning
assoc comeback timeouts before reason-9 (STA_REQ_ASSOC_WITHOUT_AUTH)
fired. Documented in marfrit/besser:notes/phase4-2026-05-07.md.
When N=3 driver-side connection_loss decisions fire within a 60 s window
on the same vif, skip the ieee80211_connection_loss() path and trigger
the c5.2-introduced bes2600_chrdev_do_bus_reset() instead. The bus
reset removes and re-probes the chip; userspace re-associates with a
fresh chip state, dodging the AP's comeback-timer rejection cycle.
Predicted Phase 7 delta vs current baseline:
- api_connection_loss rate: unchanged (we don't address the trigger)
- conditional probability of >5 s blackhole given event: <= 30 %
- worst-case recovery: 86 s -> < 10 s
Contract pin: bes2600_chrdev_do_bus_reset(sbus_ops, sbus_priv) at
bes2600/bes_chardev.c:455, introduced by c5.2. The function is async-
returning: sbus_ops->bus_reset() schedules an SDIO rescan; the helper
waits up to 3 s for the remove() callback to clear sbus_priv, then
returns. Per-vif state is gone after this point, so the recover work
lives on bes2600_common (hw_priv) and uses the global bes2600_cdev for
the bus_reset call rather than dereferencing per-vif state.
Threshold (3 / 60 s) is well above the steady-state per-vif
connection_loss rate observed in the patch-A phase-7 rep (0.86/h under
sustained load), so a true storm is required to trip it.
Files touched:
- bes2600/bes2600.h: 3 counter fields on struct bes2600_vif, 1
work_struct on struct bes2600_common, 3 prototypes
- bes2600/sta.c: 3 helpers + storm-account hook in
bes2600_connection_loss_work + storm-init in bes2600_vif_setup +
cancel_work_sync in the hw_priv shutdown path; #include bes_chardev.h
was already pulled in by an earlier c-stack patch
- bes2600/main.c: INIT_WORK alongside other hw_priv work_structs
- bes2600/debug.c: ConnectionLossStormRecoveries seq_printf in the
per-vif status seq_file output
The cw1200/cw1260 ancestor has no equivalent; this is a clean
addition. checkpatch.pl --no-tree --strict: clean (0/0/0).
Signed-off-by: Claude (noether) <claude@reauktion.de>
Two dead-in-default-build file-I/O sites remain in the driver
after the factory and chardev kernel_*() removals in the preceding
patches:
- bes_fw.c DATA_DUMP_OBSERVE: four #ifdef DATA_DUMP_OBSERVE
blocks built around the firmware-download path that open
/lib/firmware/bes2002_fw_write.bin via filp_open(O_CREAT |
O_RDWR), then log every transmitted firmware chunk via
vfs_write() inside a get_fs()/set_fs(KERNEL_DS) wrapper. The
controlling #define at bes_fw.c line 128 is commented out
('//#define DATA_DUMP_OBSERVE'), so none of this is ever
compiled in a stock build.
- main.c access_file(): a helper gated on
GET_MAC_ADDR_METHOD == 2 || == 3 (default 4) using the same
get_fs()/set_fs()/vfs_read()/vfs_write() pattern. No caller
in the tree references it -- it was orphaned when the methods
that consumed it were refactored out.
Both sites are unbuildable on modern kernels anyway: get_fs() /
set_fs() were removed from arm64 and the generic uaccess path in
the v5.10 era, and the legacy vfs_read() / vfs_write() variants
that took userspace-typed buffers went with them. The in-kernel
replacements would be kernel_read() / kernel_write(), which this
series is explicitly removing from the driver.
Remove both blocks, the commented-out '//#define DATA_DUMP_OBSERVE'
line, and the access_file() definition and its #if gate. No
behaviour change in any default or non-default build, because
nothing compiled or linked in the first place. After this patch
the driver contains zero filp_open / kernel_read / kernel_write /
vfs_read / vfs_write references -- a precondition for a
drivers/staging/bes2600/ linux-wireless RFC.
Signed-off-by: Markus Fritsche <fritsche.markus@gmail.com>
claude-noether
test0r
Julian