c/s 896 (use of blk_rq_map_sg()) made the problem worse, but from what I can tell there had been races (ring and stats updates) before. If that's not a correct observation, a perhaps better solution might be to move the struct scatterlist array out of struct blktap (and make it e.g. an on-stack variable, the problem being that blktap_device_process_request() has a pretty large stack frame already - shrinking this might be possible by moving e.g. the struct blktap_grant_table and struct blkif_request blkif_req instances the other way if the locking change here is the right thing to do). Signed-off-by: Jan Beulich --- a/drivers/xen/blktap2/device.c +++ b/drivers/xen/blktap2/device.c @@ -887,7 +887,7 @@ blktap_device_run_queue(struct blktap *t blkdev_dequeue_request(req); spin_unlock_irq(&dev->lock); - down_read(&tap->tap_sem); + down_write(&tap->tap_sem); err = blktap_device_process_request(tap, request, req); if (!err) @@ -897,7 +897,7 @@ blktap_device_run_queue(struct blktap *t blktap_request_free(tap, request); } - up_read(&tap->tap_sem); + up_write(&tap->tap_sem); spin_lock_irq(&dev->lock); }