xfs deadlock on buffer semaphore while reading directory

[Linda Walsh]

Dave Chinner wrote:
>> I can't get the buffers to 'free' no matter what
>> echo 3> /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches does nothing.
> 
> What buffers are you talking about? The deadlock is in metadata
> buffer handling, which you can't directly see, and will never be
> able to entirely free via drop caches.
> 
> if you are talking about what is reported by the "free" command,
> then that number can be ignored as it is mostly meaningless for XFS
> filesystems....
----
	Actually was talking 'cache', not buffers... sorry,
which I thought was mostly fs-data that was "freeable" (mostly).
whereas because of the error in xfs_dump, I was concerned about
it taking up all free memory (whereas normally, it doesn't
matter).

but I was trying to use echo 3>/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches, but that
seemed to pretty much be ignored...

But after boot and new kernel w/new and different problems,
xfs_dump (the new version) works fine... ;)
Sorry for any confusion.