diff --git a/drivers/md/dm.c b/drivers/md/dm.c
index e24069a..2caf492 100644
--- a/drivers/md/dm.c
+++ b/drivers/md/dm.c
@@ -1723,8 +1723,7 @@
 	struct mapped_device *md = q->queuedata;
 	struct dm_table *map = dm_get_live_table_fast(md);
 	struct dm_target *ti;
-	sector_t max_sectors;
-	int max_size = 0;
+	sector_t max_sectors, max_size = 0;
 
 	if (unlikely(!map))
 		goto out;
@@ -1739,8 +1738,16 @@
 	max_sectors = min(max_io_len(bvm->bi_sector, ti),
 			  (sector_t) queue_max_sectors(q));
 	max_size = (max_sectors << SECTOR_SHIFT) - bvm->bi_size;
-	if (unlikely(max_size < 0)) /* this shouldn't _ever_ happen */
-		max_size = 0;
+
+	/*
+	 * FIXME: this stop-gap fix _must_ be cleaned up (by passing a sector_t
+	 * to the targets' merge function since it holds sectors not bytes).
+	 * Just doing this as an interim fix for stable@ because the more
+	 * comprehensive cleanup of switching to sector_t will impact every
+	 * DM target that implements a ->merge hook.
+	 */
+	if (max_size > INT_MAX)
+		max_size = INT_MAX;
 
 	/*
 	 * merge_bvec_fn() returns number of bytes
@@ -1748,7 +1755,7 @@
 	 * max is precomputed maximal io size
 	 */
 	if (max_size && ti->type->merge)
-		max_size = ti->type->merge(ti, bvm, biovec, max_size);
+		max_size = ti->type->merge(ti, bvm, biovec, (int) max_size);
 	/*
 	 * If the target doesn't support merge method and some of the devices
 	 * provided their merge_bvec method (we know this by looking for the