There are 3 RCU-based object iteration loops in kmemleak_scan(). Because of the need to take RCU read lock, we can't insert cond_resched() into the loop like other parts of the function. As there can be millions of objects to be scanned, it takes a while to iterate all of them. The kmemleak functionality is usually enabled in a debug kernel which is much slower than a non-debug kernel. With sufficient number of kmemleak objects, the time to iterate them all may exceed 22s causing soft lockup. watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#3 stuck for 22s! [kmemleak:625] This patch series make changes to the 3 object iteration loops in kmemleak_scan() to prevent them from causing soft lockup. Waiman Long (3): mm/kmemleak: Use _irq lock/unlock variants in kmemleak_scan/_clear() mm/kmemleak: Skip unlikely objects in kmemleak_scan() without taking lock mm/kmemleak: Prevent soft lockup in first object iteration loop of kmemleak_scan() mm/kmemleak.c | 52 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----------- 1 file changed, 41 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-) -- 2.31.1