Comment 23 for bug 330824

I'm not sure this patch will fix the problem (since I haven't been able to reproduce it yet), but it is at least plausible that this reported "brown paper bag" bug might be responsible for this failure mode.

I've also had one person (irc handle SuperSquirrel) tell us on ext4 that when he went to a stock 2.6.29 kernel, he could no longer reproduce the problem which he could reproduce reliable before. If this is true, then the patch I've attached may not be the solution, and it may be caused by something else in the Ubuntu specific kernel. (Although there was one person who reported a problem very similar to the one reported here on the linux-ext4 list that I don't think was using an Ubuntu kernel, so I'm not sure what to make of this "I went to stock 2.6.29 and it went away" report.)

The patch which I've attached fixes a real bug, and it will be headed to the stable kernel series as soon as it gets accepted upstream, and I'd strongly encourage Ubuntu to pick up this patch. Whether this patch fixes the rm -rf --> soft lockup problem is a different story.