t_rq remains NULL. Read the more complete analysis at: http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/4/25/57 This looks like it requires md to trigger, even though it should potentially be possible to due with O_DIRECT (at least if you edit the kernel and doctor some of the unplug calls). The fix is to move the ->next_rq update to when we add a request to the rbtree. Then we remove the possibility for a request to exist in the rbtree code, but not have ->next_rq correctly updated. Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds Ý9