schedule() (and then unlock_kernel()) lock_kernel() mutex_unlock(A) .... This is not fine with a mutex: T1 T2 mutex_lock(write) mutex_lock(A) mutex_unlock(write) // do something mutex_lock(write) mutex_lock(A) -> already locked by T1 schedule() mutex_lock(write) -> already locked by T2 deadlock The solution in this patch is to provide a helper which releases the write lock and sleep a bit if we can't lock a mutex that depend on it. It's another simulation of the bkl behaviour. The last axis is to locate the fs callbacks that are called with the bkl held, according to Documentation/filesystem/Locking. Those are: - reiserfs_remount - reiserfs_fill_super - reiserfs_put_super Reiserfs didn't need to explicitly lock because of the context of these callbacks. But now we must take care of that with the new locking. After this patch, reiserfs suffers from a slight performance regression (for now). On UP, a high volume write with dd reports an average of 27 MB/s instead of 30 MB/s without the patch applied. Signed-off-by: Frederic Weisbecker Reviewed-by: Ingo Molnar Cc: Jeff Mahoney Cc: Peter Zijlstra Cc: Bron Gondwana Cc: Andrew Morton Cc: Linus Torvalds Cc: Alexander Viro LKML-Reference: <1239070789-13354-1-git-send-email-fweisbec@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar Q_0x