fast flow of new fsync requests can prevent mdsync() from ever completing.
This was an unforeseen consequence of a patch added in Mar 2006 to prevent
the fsync request queue from overflowing.  Problem identified by Heikki
Linnakangas and independently by ITAGAKI Takahiro; fix based on ideas from
Takahiro-san, Heikki, and Tom.

Back-patch as far as 8.1 because a previous back-patch introduced the problem
into 8.1 ...