My patch below fixes this problem by allocating the O_DIRECT kiovec
before taking the BKL.  Any comments?  Also, should we be freeing the
kiovec when removing the O_DIRECT attribute from the filp?
diff -urNX dontdiff linux-2.5.24/fs/fcntl.c linux-2.5.24-mm/fs/fcntl.c
--- linux-2.5.24/fs/fcntl.c	Sun Jun  9 06:09:49 2002
+++ linux-2.5.24-mm/fs/fcntl.c	Tue Jul  2 10:55:29 2002
@@ -235,24 +235,11 @@
 	if (!(arg & O_APPEND) && IS_APPEND(inode))
 		return -EPERM;
 
-	/* Did FASYNC state change? */
-	if ((arg ^ filp->f_flags) & FASYNC) {
-		if (filp->f_op && filp->f_op->fasync) {
-			error = filp->f_op->fasync(fd, filp, (arg & FASYNC) != 0);
-			if (error < 0)
-				return error;
-		}
-	}
-
 	if (arg & O_DIRECT) {
 		/*
-		 * alloc_kiovec() can sleep and we are only serialized by
-		 * the big kernel lock here, so abuse the i_sem to serialize
-		 * this case too. We of course wouldn't need to go deep down
-		 * to the inode layer, we could stay at the file layer, but
-		 * we don't want to pay for the memory of a semaphore in each
-		 * file structure too and we use the inode semaphore that we just
-		 * pay for anyways.
+		 * alloc_kiovec() can sleep, so abuse the i_sem to serialize
+		 * this case too.  Note we have to do this before we take the
+		 * BKL otherwise we have a race if it sleeps.
 		 */
 		error = 0;
 		down(&inode->i_sem);
@@ -263,13 +250,26 @@
 			return error;
 	}
 
+	lock_kernel();
+	/* Did FASYNC state change? */
+	if ((arg ^ filp->f_flags) & FASYNC) {
+		if (filp->f_op && filp->f_op->fasync) {
+			error = filp->f_op->fasync(fd, filp, (arg & FASYNC) != 0);
+			if (error < 0)
+				goto out;
+		}
+	}
+
 	/* required for strict SunOS emulation */
 	if (O_NONBLOCK != O_NDELAY)
 	       if (arg & O_NDELAY)
 		   arg |= O_NONBLOCK;
 
 	filp->f_flags = (arg & SETFL_MASK) | (filp->f_flags & ~SETFL_MASK);
-	return 0;
+	error = 0;
+ out:
+	unlock_kernel();
+	return error;
 }
 
 static long do_fcntl(unsigned int fd, unsigned int cmd,
@@ -295,9 +295,7 @@
 			err = filp->f_flags;
 			break;
 		case F_SETFL:
-			lock_kernel();
 			err = setfl(fd, filp, arg);
-			unlock_kernel();
 			break;
 		case F_GETLK:
 			err = fcntl_getlk(filp, (struct flock *) arg);
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