Apparently commit 8d6cb100731c4d28535adbf2a3c2d1f29be3fef4 '9pfs: reduce latency of Twalk' has introduced occasional crashes.
My first impression after looking at the backtrace: looks like the patch itself is probably not causing this, but rather unmasked this issue (i.e. increased the chance to be triggered). The crash is because of 'elem' is NULL in virtio_pdu_vunmarshal() (frame 0). bt taken with HEAD being 8d6cb100731c4d28535adbf2a3c2d1f29be3fef4: Program terminated with signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault. #0 virtio_pdu_vunmarshal (pdu=0x55a93717cde8, offset=7, fmt=0x55a9352766d1 "ddw", ap=0x7f38a9ad9cd0) at ../hw/9pfs/virtio-9p-device.c:146 146 ret = v9fs_iov_vunmarshal(elem->out_sg, elem->out_num, offset, 1, fmt, ap); [Current thread is 1 (Thread 0x7f3bddd2ac40 (LWP 7811))] (gdb) bt full #0 0x000055a934dfb9a7 in virtio_pdu_vunmarshal (pdu=0x55a93717cde8, offset=7, fmt=0x55a9352766d1 "ddw", ap=0x7f38a9ad9cd0) at ../hw/9pfs/virtio-9p-device.c: 146 s = 0x55a93717b4b8 v = 0x55a93717aee0 elem = 0x0 ret = <optimized out> #1 0x000055a934bf35e8 in pdu_unmarshal (pdu=pdu@entry=0x55a93717cde8, offset=offset@entry=7, fmt=fmt@entry=0x55a9352766d1 "ddw") at ../hw/9pfs/9p.c: 71 ret = <optimized out> ap = {{gp_offset = 24, fp_offset = 48, overflow_arg_area = 0x7f38a9ad9db0, reg_save_area = 0x7f38a9ad9cf0}} #2 0x000055a934bf68db in v9fs_walk (opaque=0x55a93717cde8) at ../hw/9pfs/ 9p.c:1720 name_idx = <optimized out> qids = 0x0 i = <optimized out> err = 0 dpath = {size = 0, data = 0x0} path = {size = 0, data = 0x0} pathes = 0x0 nwnames = 1 stbuf = {st_dev = 2050, st_ino = 1199848, st_nlink = 1, st_mode = 41471, st_uid = 0, st_gid = 0, __pad0 = 0, st_rdev = 0, st_size = 13, st_blksize = 4096, st_blocks = 16, s} fidst = {st_dev = 2050, st_ino = 1198183, st_nlink = 3, st_mode = 16877, st_uid = 0, st_gid = 0, __pad0 = 0, st_rdev = 0, st_size = 12288, st_blksize = 4096, st_blocks = 32} stbufs = 0x0 offset = 7 fid = 299 newfid = 687 wnames = 0x0 fidp = <optimized out> newfidp = 0x0 pdu = 0x55a93717cde8 s = 0x55a93717b4b8 qid = {type = 2 '\002', version = 1556732739, path = 2399697} #3 0x000055a93505760b in coroutine_trampoline (i0=<optimized out>, i1=<optimized out>) at ../util/coroutine-ucontext.c:173