From: Stephen Hemminger If sky2 device poll routine is called from netpoll_send_skb, it would deadlock. The netpoll_send_skb held the netif_tx_lock, and the poll routine could acquire it to clean up skb's. Other drivers might use same locking model. The driver is correct, netpoll should not introduce more locking problems than it causes already. So change the code to drop lock before calling poll handler. Signed-off-by: Stephen Hemminger Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton --- net/core/netpoll.c | 19 ++++++++++--------- 1 files changed, 10 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-) diff -puN net/core/netpoll.c~netpoll-tx-lock-deadlock-fix net/core/netpoll.c --- a/net/core/netpoll.c~netpoll-tx-lock-deadlock-fix +++ a/net/core/netpoll.c @@ -250,22 +250,23 @@ static void netpoll_send_skb(struct netp unsigned long flags; local_irq_save(flags); - if (netif_tx_trylock(dev)) { - /* try until next clock tick */ - for (tries = jiffies_to_usecs(1)/USEC_PER_POLL; - tries > 0; --tries) { + /* try until next clock tick */ + for (tries = jiffies_to_usecs(1)/USEC_PER_POLL; + tries > 0; --tries) { + if (netif_tx_trylock(dev)) { if (!netif_queue_stopped(dev)) status = dev->hard_start_xmit(skb, dev); + netif_tx_unlock(dev); if (status == NETDEV_TX_OK) break; - /* tickle device maybe there is some cleanup */ - netpoll_poll(np); - - udelay(USEC_PER_POLL); } - netif_tx_unlock(dev); + + /* tickle device maybe there is some cleanup */ + netpoll_poll(np); + + udelay(USEC_PER_POLL); } local_irq_restore(flags); } _