I think You’re right, it is a mediatek chip and I used to add the USB device id manually to load the module, but with nixos 23.11 it started working automatically. I’m also running a preemptable kernel… Probably related now that I think about it :P
I should track down the firmware, that was one of the things I was looking into when setting up the device id hack.
I think this happened once before after uptime of about a week… But I didn’t get any information from that crash. Also, I’m remembering that some configurations were failing to see this wifi device and falling back to wired so maybe this has been a hidden problem since the new nixos release…
Thanks to everyone for your thoughts, it’s very helpful.
Agreed, this wifi stick was mega cheap on AliExpress so I went for it. I may take a look at the PCB in detail if removing it restores order to my PC. Yes, desktop PC (still hanging on to 2012 hardware woohoo!)
Next chance I get I’m booting without the USB wifi adapter. I’m worried I may have broken something because it was mostly stable before :/ lol I actually don’t have the Nvidia card yet, I ordered a cheap Tesla K80 that’s arriving on Tuesday 😹 and it already brokey system :P
That’s a good idea, I have an Ubuntu partition that I should try.