diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst
index 4d71211fdad8..e2fdbc521033 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst
@@ -231,6 +231,8 @@ eventually gets pushed out to disk.  This tunable is used to define when dirty
 inode is old enough to be eligible for writeback by the kernel flusher threads.
 And, it is also used as the interval to wakeup dirtytime_writeback thread.
 
+Setting this to zero disables periodic dirtytime writeback.
+
 
 dirty_writeback_centisecs
 =========================
diff --git a/fs/fs-writeback.c b/fs/fs-writeback.c
index 6800886c4d10..cd21c74cd0e5 100644
--- a/fs/fs-writeback.c
+++ b/fs/fs-writeback.c
@@ -2492,7 +2492,8 @@ static void wakeup_dirtytime_writeback(struct work_struct *w)
 				wb_wakeup(wb);
 	}
 	rcu_read_unlock();
-	schedule_delayed_work(&dirtytime_work, dirtytime_expire_interval * HZ);
+	if (dirtytime_expire_interval)
+		schedule_delayed_work(&dirtytime_work, dirtytime_expire_interval * HZ);
 }
 
 static int dirtytime_interval_handler(const struct ctl_table *table, int write,
@@ -2501,8 +2502,12 @@ static int dirtytime_interval_handler(const struct ctl_table *table, int write,
 	int ret;
 
 	ret = proc_dointvec_minmax(table, write, buffer, lenp, ppos);
-	if (ret == 0 && write)
-		mod_delayed_work(system_percpu_wq, &dirtytime_work, 0);
+	if (ret == 0 && write) {
+		if (dirtytime_expire_interval)
+			mod_delayed_work(system_percpu_wq, &dirtytime_work, 0);
+		else
+			cancel_delayed_work_sync(&dirtytime_work);
+	}
 	return ret;
 }
 
@@ -2519,7 +2524,8 @@ static const struct ctl_table vm_fs_writeback_table[] = {
 
 static int __init start_dirtytime_writeback(void)
 {
-	schedule_delayed_work(&dirtytime_work, dirtytime_expire_interval * HZ);
+	if (dirtytime_expire_interval)
+		schedule_delayed_work(&dirtytime_work, dirtytime_expire_interval * HZ);
 	register_sysctl_init("vm", vm_fs_writeback_table);
 	return 0;
 }