So an old problem has recently revisited me. The b44 kernel module which provides the driver for my broadcom ethernet chip has issues. Mainly it likes to reset under heavy traffic. You wouldn't normally notice except that when using vpnclient it disconnects the VPN connection which is very annoying. I did some searching around previously and found some commentary by the driver maintainer that this resetting behavior was on purpose and they had no plans to change it. So I went to ndiswrapper and after some futzing around I got this to work. So now it doesn't disrupt my vpn session, but apparently it causes the vpn kernel module to sometimes crash and hang parts of my system after I disconnect the vpn :( This is what I call typical linux behavior. I am constantly trading one bug for another. Sometimes it's my choice, sometimes not :)
Now, if I can just figure out how to stop the system from loading b44 at boot. blacklisting it didn't seem to stop it.
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