On Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:16:29 -0400 Rik van Riel <riel@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Would it be hard to add a "please flush this file" > way to call the filesystem flushing threads? Passing the igrab()bed inode into the flusher threads would fix the iput_final() problems, as long as the alloc_pages() caller never blocks indefinitely waiting for the work which the flusher threads are doing. Otherwise we get (very hard-to-hit) deadlocks where the alloc_pages() caller holds VFS locks and is waiting for the flusher threads while all the flusher threads are stuck under iput_final() waiting for those VFS locks. That's fixable by not using igrab()/iput(). You can use lock_page() to pin the address_space. Pass the address of the locked page across to the flusher threads so they don't try to lock it a second time, or just use trylocking on that writeback path or whatever. -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxx For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>