Arch Linux (dual boot with Win 10). Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception in interrupt. Caps Lock indicator blinking until reboot

Question

On my laptop I have Arch Linux and Windows 10 installed (BIOS MBR). When I'm using Arch occasional kernel panic occurs. This happens mostly when I install some packages using pacman. Last time I started the system without X and I was able to take a picture of the output when this failure occured again during installation of some font package.

Here's the picture: https://imgur.com/94yeW9X (I don't have enough reputation points to post images here).

Windows 10 which is also installed on this laptop is working just fine, no BSODs, random restarts etc.

What could be causing this failure? And how do I resolve this issue?

Answer 1

The panic message points towards the "brcmsmac" Broadcom Wi-Fi drivers. I've seen this exact panic earlier on someone else's system, and they verified that switching to Ethernet avoids the crash.

Yet another thread on Reddit mentions that the proprietary "broadcom-wl" driver can be used as an alternative if you require Wi-Fi.

I'm not sure if this is a bug in the driver itself, or just fallout from other kernel changes. Try to install older kernels to find out exactly which release broke it, and then if you have a few days to spare, bisect to a specific change.

Answer 2

The problem is solved! Thanks to user1686!

This issue was really caused by the Wi-Fi driver "brcmsmac" (Broadcom Wi-Fi driver). To resolve this issue I decided to install another proprietary driver for my wireless card because I require Wi-Fi on a daily basis.

At first I plugged my Android to use it as USB-tethering to avoid crashes.

Then I downloaded another module for this wireless card:

# pacman -Syu broadcom-wl

The problem module brcmsmac was loading as part of initramfs on boot. I checked this by using the command:

~$ mkinitcpio -M

I blacklisted this module (and "b43" module that is also in conflict with "wl" module). In order to blacklist these modules I created a .conf file inside /etc/modprobe.d/ directory:

# nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

And then I appended these lines to the file:

blacklist brcmsmac
blacklist b43

And then, guided by Arch Wiki, I added the path to this .conf file to FILES array in mkinitcpio.conf:

# nano /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

FILES=(/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf)

Then I regenerated the initramfs and rebooted the system:

# mkinitcpio -p linux
# reboot

Once the system was loaded I tried to connect to my Wi-Fi network (I use NetworkManager) and it worked! But still I was needed to test my connection, so I tried to download some huge file from the Internet and nothing bad happened, no crashes and the file was completely downloaded.

I don't know if I did everything right but now my laptop is working stable. I watch videos online, download files, upgrade my system using pacman, no kernel panics so far!