return PAGE_ACTIVATE;
                }
 
-               /*
-                * Wait on writeback if requested to. This happens when
-                * direct reclaiming a large contiguous area and the
-                * first attempt to free a range of pages fails.
-                */
-               if (PageWriteback(page) &&
-                   (sc->reclaim_mode & RECLAIM_MODE_SYNC))
-                       wait_on_page_writeback(page);
-
                if (!PageWriteback(page)) {
                        /* synchronous write or broken a_ops? */
                        ClearPageReclaim(page);
 
                if (PageWriteback(page)) {
                        /*
-                        * Synchronous reclaim is performed in two passes,
-                        * first an asynchronous pass over the list to
-                        * start parallel writeback, and a second synchronous
-                        * pass to wait for the IO to complete.  Wait here
-                        * for any page for which writeback has already
-                        * started.
+                        * Synchronous reclaim cannot queue pages for
+                        * writeback due to the possibility of stack overflow
+                        * but if it encounters a page under writeback, wait
+                        * for the IO to complete.
                         */
                        if ((sc->reclaim_mode & RECLAIM_MODE_SYNC) &&
                            may_enter_fs)
 }
 
 /*
- * Returns true if the caller should wait to clean dirty/writeback pages.
+ * Returns true if a direct reclaim should wait on pages under writeback.
  *
  * If we are direct reclaiming for contiguous pages and we do not reclaim
  * everything in the list, try again and wait for writeback IO to complete.