I'm getting this when I try to spin_unlock a recently acquired lock with spin_lock. IRQs are still somewhat of a mystery to me, and cryptic lock state symbols (IN-HARDIRQ-W, HARDIRQ-ON-W) are unintelligible to me. Dec 7 15:52:20 dev2 kernel: ================================= Dec 7 15:52:20 dev2 kernel: [ INFO: inconsistent lock state ] Dec 7 15:52:20 dev2 kernel: 2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64.debug #1 Dec 7 15:52:20 dev2 kernel: --------------------------------- Dec 7 15:52:20 dev2 kernel: inconsistent {IN-HARDIRQ-W} -> {HARDIRQ-ON-W} usage. Looking at lockdep.c isn't giving me any help either. It's obfuscated beyond my ability to grok by simply reading the code. It seems like this portion should help me, but it doesn't.... Dec 7 15:52:20 dev2 kernel: {IN-HARDIRQ-W} state was registered at: Dec 7 15:52:20 dev2 kernel: [<ffffffff810afbca>] __lock_acquire+0x77a/0x1570 Dec 7 15:52:20 dev2 kernel: [<ffffffff810b0a64>] lock_acquire+0xa4/0x120 Dec 7 15:52:20 dev2 kernel: [<ffffffff81520c75>] _spin_lock_irqsave+0x55/0xa0 Dec 7 15:52:20 dev2 kernel: [<ffffffffa006b19b>] blk_done+0x2b/0x110 [virtio_blk] Dec 7 15:52:20 dev2 kernel: [<ffffffffa00401dc>] vring_interrupt+0x3c/0xd0 [virtio_ring] Dec 7 15:52:20 dev2 kernel: [<ffffffff810ec080>] handle_IRQ_event+0x50/0x160 Dec 7 15:52:20 dev2 kernel: [<ffffffff810ee840>] handle_edge_irq+0xe0/0x170 Dec 7 15:52:20 dev2 kernel: [<ffffffff8100e059>] handle_irq+0x49/0xa0 Dec 7 15:52:20 dev2 kernel: [<ffffffff81526cdc>] do_IRQ+0x6c/0xf0 Dec 7 15:52:20 dev2 kernel: [<ffffffff8100ba93>] ret_from_intr+0x0/0x16 Dec 7 15:52:20 dev2 kernel: [<ffffffff810148e2>] default_idle+0x52/0xc0 Dec 7 15:52:20 dev2 kernel: [<ffffffff81009e0b>] cpu_idle+0xbb/0x110 Dec 7 15:52:20 dev2 kernel: [<ffffffff81516623>] start_secondary+0x211/0x254 Then later it tells me that I'm holding 1 lock, which is the one that I mentioned at the beginning that was just recently locked.