We had a user report the soft lockup detector kicked after 22 seconds of no progress, with this trace.. :BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for 22s! [flush-8:16:3137] :Pid: 3137, comm: flush-8:16 Not tainted 3.6.7-4.fc17.x86_64 #1 :RIP: 0010:[<ffffffff812eeb8c>] [<ffffffff812eeb8c>] __list_del_entry+0x2c/0xd0 :Call Trace: : [<ffffffff811b783e>] redirty_tail+0x5e/0x80 : [<ffffffff811b8212>] __writeback_inodes_wb+0x72/0xd0 : [<ffffffff811b980b>] wb_writeback+0x23b/0x2d0 : [<ffffffff811b9b5c>] wb_do_writeback+0xac/0x1f0 : [<ffffffff8106c0e0>] ? __internal_add_timer+0x130/0x130 : [<ffffffff811b9d2b>] bdi_writeback_thread+0x8b/0x230 : [<ffffffff811b9ca0>] ? wb_do_writeback+0x1f0/0x1f0 : [<ffffffff8107fde3>] kthread+0x93/0xa0 : [<ffffffff81627e04>] kernel_thread_helper+0x4/0x10 : [<ffffffff8107fd50>] ? kthread_freezable_should_stop+0x70/0x70 : [<ffffffff81627e00>] ? gs_change+0x13/0x13 Looking over the code, is it possible that something could be dirtying pages faster than writeback can get them written out, keeping us in this loop indefitely ? Should there be something in this loop periodically poking the watchdog perhaps ? Dave -- 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>