diff -urN loop-ref/fs/buffer.c loop/fs/buffer.c
--- loop-ref/fs/buffer.c	Wed Dec 19 04:17:30 2001
+++ loop/fs/buffer.c	Wed Dec 19 03:43:24 2001
@@ -2547,6 +2547,7 @@
 	/* Uhhuh, start writeback so that we don't end up with all dirty pages */
 	write_unlock(&hash_table_lock);
 	spin_unlock(&lru_list_lock);
+	gfp_mask = pf_gfp_mask(gfp_mask);
 	if (gfp_mask & __GFP_IO && !(current->flags & PF_ATOMICALLOC)) {
 		if ((gfp_mask & __GFP_HIGHIO) || !PageHighMem(page)) {
 			if (sync_page_buffers(bh)) {
diff -urN loop-ref/include/linux/mm.h loop/include/linux/mm.h
--- loop-ref/include/linux/mm.h	Wed Dec 19 04:17:30 2001
+++ loop/include/linux/mm.h	Wed Dec 19 04:15:52 2001
@@ -562,6 +562,15 @@
 
 #define GFP_DMA		__GFP_DMA
 
+static inline unsigned int pf_gfp_mask(unsigned int gfp_mask)
+{
+	/* avoid all memory balancing I/O methods if this task cannot block on I/O */
+	if (current->flags & PF_NOIO)
+		gfp_mask &= ~(__GFP_IO | __GFP_HIGHIO | __GFP_FS);
+
+	return gfp_mask;
+}
+
 extern int heap_stack_gap;
 
 /*
diff -urN loop-ref/mm/vmscan.c loop/mm/vmscan.c
--- loop-ref/mm/vmscan.c	Wed Dec 19 04:17:30 2001
+++ loop/mm/vmscan.c	Wed Dec 19 03:43:24 2001
@@ -611,6 +611,8 @@
 
 int try_to_free_pages(zone_t *classzone, unsigned int gfp_mask, unsigned int order)
 {
+	gfp_mask = pf_gfp_mask(gfp_mask);
+
 	for (;;) {
 		int tries = vm_scan_ratio << 2;
 		int failed_swapout = !(gfp_mask & __GFP_IO);