Under a particular load on one machine, I have hit shmem_evict_inode()'s BUG_ON(inode->i_blocks), enough times to narrow it down to a particular race between swapout and eviction. It comes from the "if (freed > 0)" asymmetry in shmem_recalc_inode(), and the lack of coherent locking between mapping's nrpages and shmem's swapped count. There's a window in shmem_writepage(), between lowering nrpages in shmem_delete_from_page_cache() and then raising swapped count, when the freed count appears to be +1 when it should be 0, and then the asymmetry stops it from being corrected with -1 before hitting the BUG. One answer is coherent locking: using tree_lock throughout, without info->lock; reasonable, but the raw_spin_lock in percpu_counter_add() on used_blocks makes that messier than expected. Another answer may be a further effort to eliminate the weird shmem_recalc_inode() altogether, but previous attempts at that failed. So far undecided, but for now change the BUG_ON to WARN_ON: in usual circumstances it remains a useful consistency check. Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hughd@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx --- mm/shmem.c | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) --- 3.7-rc4/mm/shmem.c 2012-10-14 16:16:58.361309122 -0700 +++ linux/mm/shmem.c 2012-11-01 14:31:04.288185742 -0700 @@ -643,7 +643,7 @@ static void shmem_evict_inode(struct ino kfree(info->symlink); simple_xattrs_free(&info->xattrs); - BUG_ON(inode->i_blocks); + WARN_ON(inode->i_blocks); shmem_free_inode(inode->i_sb); clear_inode(inode); } -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>