diff -Nru a/fs/reiserfs/inode.c b/fs/reiserfs/inode.c
--- a/fs/reiserfs/inode.c	Mon Aug 19 18:58:41 2002
+++ b/fs/reiserfs/inode.c	Mon Aug 19 18:58:41 2002
@@ -757,15 +758,21 @@
 	    */
 	    mark_buffer_uptodate (unbh, 1);
 
-	    /* we've converted the tail, so we must 
-	    ** flush unbh before the transaction commits
+	    /* unbh->b_page == NULL in case of DIRECT_IO request, this means
+	       buffer will disappear shortly, so it should not be added to
+	       any of our lists.
 	    */
-	    add_to_flushlist(inode, unbh) ;
-
-	    /* mark it dirty now to prevent commit_write from adding
-	     ** this buffer to the inode's dirty buffer list
-	     */
-	    __mark_buffer_dirty(unbh) ;
+	    if ( unbh->b_page ) {
+		/* we've converted the tail, so we must 
+		** flush unbh before the transaction commits
+		*/
+		add_to_flushlist(inode, unbh) ;
+
+		/* mark it dirty now to prevent commit_write from adding
+		 ** this buffer to the inode's dirty buffer list
+		 */
+		__mark_buffer_dirty(unbh) ;
+	    }
 
 	    //inode->i_blocks += inode->i_sb->s_blocksize / 512;
 	    //mark_tail_converted (inode);
diff -Nru a/fs/reiserfs/tail_conversion.c b/fs/reiserfs/tail_conversion.c
--- a/fs/reiserfs/tail_conversion.c	Mon Aug 19 18:58:41 2002
+++ b/fs/reiserfs/tail_conversion.c	Mon Aug 19 18:58:41 2002
@@ -105,8 +105,10 @@
 	/* we only send the unbh pointer if the buffer is not up to date.
 	** this avoids overwriting good data from writepage() with old data
 	** from the disk or buffer cache
+	** Special case: unbh->b_page will be NULL if we are coming through
+	** DIRECT_IO handler here.
 	*/
-	if (buffer_uptodate(unbh) || Page_Uptodate(unbh->b_page)) {
+	if ( !unbh->b_page || buffer_uptodate(unbh) || Page_Uptodate(unbh->b_page)) {
 	    up_to_date_bh = NULL ;
 	} else {
 	    up_to_date_bh = unbh ;