hifn(4) causing system lockup

[Vivek Khera]

On Mar 17, 2008, at 4:05 PM, Sascha Klauder wrote:

> I've recently upgraded my 6.2-STABLE workstation to RELENG_7,
> and I'm now experiencing system lockups that seem to be caused
> by the hifn(4) driver.
>
> I've got a Soekris vpn1401 card to help with GELI disk en-
> cryption.  Reading from a GELI volume is causing the system to
> freeze completely, which does not happen if software crypto is
> used (i.e. hifn.ko not loaded).  I can't enter kernel debugger
> (ctrl+alt+esc doesn't work anymore) and my (remote) kgdb-fu
> isn't up to par anyway.

I've had the exact same kind of issue with the vpn1401 PCI card in a  
Dell box for my firewall running pfSense (at the tie it was based on  
FreeBSD 6.1 I believe).  It would lock up the firewall within 2 hours  
to 4 days of uptime.  Once we removed the card, no lockups.  Soekris  
never responded to my questions about such behavior.

In contrast, their mini-PCI cards I have installed on some WRAP boards  
never lockup using the same software.

I blame the card.