state when accessed by multithreaded client applications, the following possible though highly unlikely deadlock slipped in: Thread A: Thread B: - acquire mmap_sem - raw1394_write() or raw1394_ioctl() - raw1394_mmap() - acquire state_mutex - acquire state_mutex - copy_to/from_user(), possible page fault: acquire mmap_sem The simplest fix is to use mutex_trylock() instead of mutex_lock() in raw1394_mmap(). This changes the behavior under contention in a way which is visible to userspace clients. However, since multithreaded access was entirely buggy before state_mutex was added and libraw1394's documentation advised application programmers to use a handle only in a single thread, this change in behaviour should not be an issue in practice at all. Since we have to use mutex_trylock() in raw1394_mmap() regardless whether /dev/raw1394 was opened with O_NONBLOCK or not, we now use mutex_trylock() unconditionally everywhere for state_mutex, just to have consistent behavior. Reported-by: Johannes Weiner Signed-off-by: Stefan Richter αΣ