Further bisect indicated this bad commit from the merge. Given kdump kernel was running with maxcpus=1, I guess this work caused fs/bio.c hung in the workqueue on UP. Reverted the whole merge let kdump work again.
commit e22bee782b3b00bd4534ae9b1c5fb2e8e6573c5c
Author: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Date: Tue Jun 29 10:07:14 2010 +0200
workqueue: implement concurrency managed dynamic worker pool
Instead of creating a worker for each cwq and putting it into the
shared pool, manage per-cpu workers dynamically.
Works aren't supposed to be cpu cycle hogs and maintaining just enough
concurrency to prevent work processing from stalling due to lack of
processing context is optimal. gcwq keeps the number of concurrent
active workers to minimum but no less. As long as there's one or more
running workers on the cpu, no new worker is scheduled so that works
can be processed in batch as much as possible but when the last
running worker blocks, gcwq immediately schedules new worker so that
the cpu doesn't sit idle while there are works to be processed.
gcwq always keeps at least single idle worker around. When a new
worker is necessary and the worker is the last idle one, the worker
assumes the role of "manager" and manages the worker pool -
ie. creates another worker. Forward-progress is guaranteed by having
dedicated rescue workers for workqueues which may be necessary while
creating a new worker. When the manager is having problem creating a
new worker, mayday timer activates and rescue workers are summoned to
the cpu and execute works which might be necessary to create new
workers.
Trustee is expanded to serve the role of manager while a CPU is being
taken down and stays down. As no new works are supposed to be queued
on a dead cpu, it just needs to drain all the existing ones. Trustee
continues to try to create new workers and summon rescuers as long as
there ...
