[hsflinux] modprobe of hsf modules brings system to its knees

[Josh Green]

I have a Dell Inspiron 5150 laptop with an HSF Conexant modem:

Output of applicable portion of 'lspci -v':

0000:00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M)
AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [Generic])
        Subsystem: Conexant: Unknown device 5422
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 7
        I/O ports at b400
        I/O ports at b080 [size=128]
        Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2

I'm using latest Gentoo with kernel 2.6.7-gentoo-r11, latest Linuxant
driver hsfmodem-6.03.00lnxt04072900full.tar.gz with a paid license. 

After performing hsfconfig, the hsf modules are loaded and everything
works fine (can connect to Internet, etc). If I reboot the computer and
log in to my gnome session the system rapidly becomes unusable as severe
hard disk thrashing occurs. Starting a top session in a text virtual
terminal before logging into gnome (good luck trying to run top after
system starts to go down hill, system is too slow by that point!) shows
that modprobe is consuming 100% CPU. Eventually (within 10 to 20
seconds) I am forced to use Sys-Request keys to sync/remount/reboot
machine. System is to the point of virtually non-responsiveness (hard
drive going nuts). I verified that it was the hsf modules by moving the
misc/ directory (containing only hsf modules) out of the kernel modules
directory, and then moved it back in after logging into gnome and
running wvdial (which caused the same problem to occur again).

I'd like to be able to figure out what module is being loaded at the
time of rapid system degradation, but there just isn't time to do much
probing for information and I want to minimize unceremonious reboots. So
I wanted to check on the list to hear if anyone else has experienced
this problem. I can attempt to figure out the command line of the
problem modprobe command if additional information is desired. Best
regards,
	Josh Green