System Freeze in 2.4.2-2 (RedHat 7.1)

[Zimmermann, Christopher]

I'm experiencing a system freeze (no oops message) in RedHat Linux 7.1 when
calling the function devinet_ioctl() with the SIOCSIFADDR command from
within a kernel module.  The function is called within the scope of
userspace addressing in the following manner.

int devinet_ioctl_wrapper(unsigned int cmd, struct ifreq *arg)
{
	int res;
	
	mm_segment_t oldfs = get_fs();
	set_fs(get_ds());
	res = devinet_ioctl(cmd,arg);
	set_fs(oldfs);
	
	return res;
}

This is how ipconfig.c illustrates how to use this function from within a
kernel module, see ic_dev_ioctl() function in the source file.

When running in the scope of a kgdb patched kernel, an assertion is flagged
the first (and only first) time this function is called from within my
kernel module for skb_alloc being called non-atomically with interrupts
enabled.  But, allowing the kernel to continue from this point, there is no
system freeze and everything appears to operate according to design.

Is there anything I am supposed to do before calling this function?  

Thanks,
Chris