diff --git a/mm/vmstat.c b/mm/vmstat.c
index 4e885ecd44d1..a8222041bd44 100644
--- a/mm/vmstat.c
+++ b/mm/vmstat.c
@@ -1383,12 +1383,29 @@ static void pagetypeinfo_showfree_print(struct seq_file *m,
 			unsigned long freecount = 0;
 			struct free_area *area;
 			struct list_head *curr;
+			bool overflow = false;
 
 			area = &(zone->free_area[order]);
 
-			list_for_each(curr, &area->free_list[mtype])
-				freecount++;
-			seq_printf(m, "%6lu ", freecount);
+			list_for_each(curr, &area->free_list[mtype]) {
+				/*
+				 * Cap the free_list iteration because it might
+				 * be really large and we are under a spinlock
+				 * so a long time spent here could trigger a
+				 * hard lockup detector. Anyway this is a
+				 * debugging tool so knowing there is a handful
+				 * of pages of this order should be more than
+				 * sufficient.
+				 */
+				if (++freecount >= 100000) {
+					overflow = true;
+					break;
+				}
+			}
+			seq_printf(m, "%s%6lu ", overflow ? ">" : "", freecount);
+			spin_unlock_irq(&zone->lock);
+			cond_resched();
+			spin_lock_irq(&zone->lock);
 		}
 		seq_putc(m, '\n');
 	}