linux-imx

dm bufio: avoid a possible __vmalloc deadlock

This patch uses memalloc_noio_save to avoid a possible deadlock in
dm-bufio.  (it could happen only with large block size, at most
PAGE_SIZE << MAX_ORDER (typically 8MiB).

__vmalloc doesn't fully respect gfp flags. The specified gfp flags are
used for allocation of requested pages, structures vmap_area, vmap_block
and vm_struct and the radix tree nodes.

However, the kernel pagetables are allocated always with GFP_KERNEL.
Thus the allocation of pagetables can recurse back to the I/O layer and
cause a deadlock.

This patch uses the function memalloc_noio_save to set per-process
PF_MEMALLOC_NOIO flag and the function memalloc_noio_restore to restore
it. When this flag is set, all allocations in the process are done with
implied GFP_NOIO flag, thus the deadlock can't happen.

This should be backported to stable kernels, but they don't have the
PF_MEMALLOC_NOIO flag and memalloc_noio_save/memalloc_noio_restore
functions. So, PF_MEMALLOC should be set and restored instead.

Signed-off-by: Mikulas Patocka <mpatocka@redhat.com>
Cc: stable@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Alasdair G Kergon <agk@redhat.com>