[Bug 37815] complete freeze when trying to connect to internetvia ralink usb dongle

[bailout]

Public bug reported:

Affects: linux-source-2.6.15 (Ubuntu)
       Severity: Normal
       Priority: (none set)
         Status: Unconfirmed


Description:
I posted about this on the forums in the hope that someone would help me
compose a more professional and useful bug report but as no one has I
will try here anyway. If you think it is worth investigating please tell
me what I can do to get more info as I am a bit of a noob.

I have kubuntu dapper installed. I connect to the internet through a
Belkin wireless usb dongle. This has a ralink chip which has drivers
built into dapper, ralink 2570. I had to add lines to my networking file
to get it to connect automatically on startup.

It worked for a while with only occasional problems. If I disconnected
through system settings/networking and then tried to reconnect then it
would usually crash my pc. By crash I mean the total crash that can only
be escaped from with a hardware reboot.

I usually update most days. A week or so ago an update somehow disabled
the connect on startup although the relevent lines are still in my
networking file. I cannot connect through sys settings - it briefly
flashes connected and then goes back to disconnected. I did manage to
get on a couple of times by running "sudo /etc/init.d/networking
restart" from the terminal. However this usually results in the complete
pc freeze again. Yesterday it crashed every time I tried. It gets
halfway down its list of messages and then just freezes and the pc won't
accept any input from keyboard or mouse.

I dled flight 6 and updated from that and managed to connect using the
network restart command above, updated again from net, rebooted and it
was back to freezing again when I tried to connect.

I would like to do my bit for the good of humanity by submitting a
proper bug report but have never done so before and am I bit unsure what
to do. I have read the sticky on getting debug versions of packages etc
and may be able to dl packages through windows. However I don't know
what package is actually crashing.

Could somone who knows more about how linux networking actually works
please give me some guidence on what I should do?

-- 
complete freeze when trying to connect to internetvia ralink usb dongle
https://launchpad.net/bugs/37815