This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled mm: clear __GFP_FS when PF_MEMALLOC_NOIO is set to the 3.16-stable tree which can be found at: http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/stable-queue.git;a=summary The filename of the patch is: mm-clear-__gfp_fs-when-pf_memalloc_noio-is-set.patch and it can be found in the queue-3.16 subdirectory. If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to the stable tree, please let <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> know about it. >From 934f3072c17cc8886f4c043b47eeeb1b12f8de33 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Junxiao Bi <junxiao.bi@xxxxxxxxxx> Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2014 15:28:23 -0700 Subject: mm: clear __GFP_FS when PF_MEMALLOC_NOIO is set From: Junxiao Bi <junxiao.bi@xxxxxxxxxx> commit 934f3072c17cc8886f4c043b47eeeb1b12f8de33 upstream. commit 21caf2fc1931 ("mm: teach mm by current context info to not do I/O during memory allocation") introduces PF_MEMALLOC_NOIO flag to avoid doing I/O inside memory allocation, __GFP_IO is cleared when this flag is set, but __GFP_FS implies __GFP_IO, it should also be cleared. Or it may still run into I/O, like in superblock shrinker. And this will make the kernel run into the deadlock case described in that commit. See Dave Chinner's comment about io in superblock shrinker: Filesystem shrinkers do indeed perform IO from the superblock shrinker and have for years. Even clean inodes can require IO before they can be freed - e.g. on an orphan list, need truncation of post-eof blocks, need to wait for ordered operations to complete before it can be freed, etc. IOWs, Ext4, btrfs and XFS all can issue and/or block on arbitrary amounts of IO in the superblock shrinker context. XFS, in particular, has been doing transactions and IO from the VFS inode cache shrinker since it was first introduced.... Fix this by clearing __GFP_FS in memalloc_noio_flags(), this function has masked all the gfp_mask that will be passed into fs for the processes setting PF_MEMALLOC_NOIO in the direct reclaim path. v1 thread at: https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/9/3/32 Signed-off-by: Junxiao Bi <junxiao.bi@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Dave Chinner <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: joyce.xue <xuejiufei@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Ming Lei <ming.lei@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- include/linux/sched.h | 6 ++++-- 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) --- a/include/linux/sched.h +++ b/include/linux/sched.h @@ -1947,11 +1947,13 @@ extern void thread_group_cputime_adjuste #define tsk_used_math(p) ((p)->flags & PF_USED_MATH) #define used_math() tsk_used_math(current) -/* __GFP_IO isn't allowed if PF_MEMALLOC_NOIO is set in current->flags */ +/* __GFP_IO isn't allowed if PF_MEMALLOC_NOIO is set in current->flags + * __GFP_FS is also cleared as it implies __GFP_IO. + */ static inline gfp_t memalloc_noio_flags(gfp_t flags) { if (unlikely(current->flags & PF_MEMALLOC_NOIO)) - flags &= ~__GFP_IO; + flags &= ~(__GFP_IO | __GFP_FS); return flags; } Patches currently in stable-queue which might be from junxiao.bi@xxxxxxxxxx are queue-3.16/mm-clear-__gfp_fs-when-pf_memalloc_noio-is-set.patch -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe stable" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html