On Mon, 14 Jan 2019 09:53:43 +0100 Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxx> wrote: > When superblock has lots of inodes without any pagecache (like is the > case for /proc), drop_pagecache_sb() will iterate through all of them > without dropping sb->s_inode_list_lock which can lead to softlockups > (one of our customers hit this). > > Fix the problem by going to the slow path and doing cond_resched() in > case the process needs rescheduling. > > ... > > --- a/fs/drop_caches.c > +++ b/fs/drop_caches.c > @@ -21,8 +21,13 @@ static void drop_pagecache_sb(struct super_block *sb, void *unused) > spin_lock(&sb->s_inode_list_lock); > list_for_each_entry(inode, &sb->s_inodes, i_sb_list) { > spin_lock(&inode->i_lock); > + /* > + * We must skip inodes in unusual state. We may also skip > + * inodes without pages but we deliberately won't in case > + * we need to reschedule to avoid softlockups. > + */ > if ((inode->i_state & (I_FREEING|I_WILL_FREE|I_NEW)) || > - (inode->i_mapping->nrpages == 0)) { > + (inode->i_mapping->nrpages == 0 && !need_resched())) { > spin_unlock(&inode->i_lock); > continue; > } > @@ -30,6 +35,7 @@ static void drop_pagecache_sb(struct super_block *sb, void *unused) > spin_unlock(&inode->i_lock); > spin_unlock(&sb->s_inode_list_lock); > > + cond_resched(); > invalidate_mapping_pages(inode->i_mapping, 0, -1); > iput(toput_inode); > toput_inode = inode; Are we sure there's no situation in which a large number of inodes can be in the "unusual state", leading to the same issue?