Attempting to lock a spinlock in the down function results in freezing - c

Question

I am attempting to implement my own version of a semaphore into a linux vm and am running into a crash when I attempt to lock a spinlock inside the down function. Using GDB I found that the down is called immediately after the create function so the problem is definitely there.
Here is the create function:
asmlinkage long sys_create(int value, char name[32], char key[32]){
struct sem *new_sem = (struct sem*) kmalloc(sizeof(struct sem), GFP_ATOMIC);
struct sem_node *new_sem_node = (struct sem_node*) kmalloc(sizeof(struct sem_node), GFP_ATOMIC);
struct sem_node *curr_sem = sem_list_head;
new_sem_node->sem = new_sem;
spin_lock(&sem_lock);
new_sem->sem_id = IDcntr++;
spin_lock_init(&(new_sem->lock));
strncpy(new_sem->key, key, 32);
strncpy(new_sem->name, name, 32);
if(curr_sem == NULL)
{
sem_list_head = new_sem_node;
}
else
{
while(curr_sem->next != NULL)
{
curr_sem = curr_sem->next;
}
curr_sem->next = new_sem_node;
}
spin_unlock(&sem_lock);
return new_sem->sem_id;
}
Functions spin_lock, spin_unlock, and spin_lock_init are working as intended. The down function calls:
spin_lock(&(sem_list_head->sem->lock));
right at the beginning and freezes. To be more specific, in the gdb terminal, I try and get to the next line and it stops and in the actual machine it's completely stopped. No other functions are called between the create and down function. Below is the header file that defines the sem_node, process_node, and sem objects used in the create and down functions:
int IDcntr = 1;
DEFINE_SPINLOCK(sem_lock);
struct sem_node
{
struct sem* sem;
struct sem_node* next;
};
struct process_node
{
struct process_node* next;
struct task_struct* task;
};
struct sem
{
int value;
long sem_id;
spinlock_t lock;
char key[32];
char name[32];
struct process_node* head;
struct process_node* tail;
};
struct sem_node* sem_list_head = NULL;
Through independent testing the function DEFINE_SPINLOCK and object spinlock_t are working as intended. After thorough debugging the problem is in the create function. I freely admit that I am still learning how semaphores work so chances are I didn't set variables correctly or define things correctly. Any help in pointing me the right way would be greatly appreciated.