During long I/O operations, the hang_check timer may fire, trigger stack dumps that unnecessarily alarm the user. Eg. hdparm --security-erase NULL /dev/sdb ## can take *hours* to complete So, if hang_check is armed, we should wake up periodically to prevent it from triggering. This patch uses a wake-up interval equal to half the hang_check timer period, which keeps overhead low enough. Signed-off-by: Mark Lord <mlord@xxxxxxxxx> --- old/block/blk-exec.c 2010-09-20 19:56:53.000000000 -0400 +++ linux/block/blk-exec.c 2010-09-24 09:43:32.342604574 -0400 @@ -80,6 +80,7 @@ DECLARE_COMPLETION_ONSTACK(wait); char sense[SCSI_SENSE_BUFFERSIZE]; int err = 0; + unsigned long hang_check; /* * we need an extra reference to the request, so we can look at @@ -95,7 +96,13 @@ rq->end_io_data = &wait; blk_execute_rq_nowait(q, bd_disk, rq, at_head, blk_end_sync_rq); - wait_for_completion(&wait); + + /* Prevent hang_check timer from firing at us during very long I/O */ + hang_check = sysctl_hung_task_timeout_secs; + if (hang_check) + while (!wait_for_completion_timeout(&wait, hang_check * (HZ/2))); + else + wait_for_completion(&wait); if (rq->errors) err = -EIO; -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ide" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html