About Kernel Documentation Linux Kernel Contact Linux Resources Linux Blog

Documentation / cgroups / memory.txt




Custom Search

Based on kernel version 3.3. Page generated on 2012-03-23 21:25 EST.

1	Memory Resource Controller
2	
3	NOTE: The Memory Resource Controller has generically been referred to as the
4	      memory controller in this document. Do not confuse memory controller
5	      used here with the memory controller that is used in hardware.
6	
7	(For editors)
8	In this document:
9	      When we mention a cgroup (cgroupfs's directory) with memory controller,
10	      we call it "memory cgroup". When you see git-log and source code, you'll
11	      see patch's title and function names tend to use "memcg".
12	      In this document, we avoid using it.
13	
14	Benefits and Purpose of the memory controller
15	
16	The memory controller isolates the memory behaviour of a group of tasks
17	from the rest of the system. The article on LWN [12] mentions some probable
18	uses of the memory controller. The memory controller can be used to
19	
20	a. Isolate an application or a group of applications
21	   Memory hungry applications can be isolated and limited to a smaller
22	   amount of memory.
23	b. Create a cgroup with limited amount of memory, this can be used
24	   as a good alternative to booting with mem=XXXX.
25	c. Virtualization solutions can control the amount of memory they want
26	   to assign to a virtual machine instance.
27	d. A CD/DVD burner could control the amount of memory used by the
28	   rest of the system to ensure that burning does not fail due to lack
29	   of available memory.
30	e. There are several other use cases, find one or use the controller just
31	   for fun (to learn and hack on the VM subsystem).
32	
33	Current Status: linux-2.6.34-mmotm(development version of 2010/April)
34	
35	Features:
36	 - accounting anonymous pages, file caches, swap caches usage and limiting them.
37	 - private LRU and reclaim routine. (system's global LRU and private LRU
38	   work independently from each other)
39	 - optionally, memory+swap usage can be accounted and limited.
40	 - hierarchical accounting
41	 - soft limit
42	 - moving(recharging) account at moving a task is selectable.
43	 - usage threshold notifier
44	 - oom-killer disable knob and oom-notifier
45	 - Root cgroup has no limit controls.
46	
47	 Kernel memory support is work in progress, and the current version provides
48	 basically functionality. (See Section 2.7)
49	
50	Brief summary of control files.
51	
52	 tasks				 # attach a task(thread) and show list of threads
53	 cgroup.procs			 # show list of processes
54	 cgroup.event_control		 # an interface for event_fd()
55	 memory.usage_in_bytes		 # show current res_counter usage for memory
56					 (See 5.5 for details)
57	 memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes	 # show current res_counter usage for memory+Swap
58					 (See 5.5 for details)
59	 memory.limit_in_bytes		 # set/show limit of memory usage
60	 memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes	 # set/show limit of memory+Swap usage
61	 memory.failcnt			 # show the number of memory usage hits limits
62	 memory.memsw.failcnt		 # show the number of memory+Swap hits limits
63	 memory.max_usage_in_bytes	 # show max memory usage recorded
64	 memory.memsw.max_usage_in_bytes # show max memory+Swap usage recorded
65	 memory.soft_limit_in_bytes	 # set/show soft limit of memory usage
66	 memory.stat			 # show various statistics
67	 memory.use_hierarchy		 # set/show hierarchical account enabled
68	 memory.force_empty		 # trigger forced move charge to parent
69	 memory.swappiness		 # set/show swappiness parameter of vmscan
70					 (See sysctl's vm.swappiness)
71	 memory.move_charge_at_immigrate # set/show controls of moving charges
72	 memory.oom_control		 # set/show oom controls.
73	 memory.numa_stat		 # show the number of memory usage per numa node
74	
75	 memory.kmem.tcp.limit_in_bytes  # set/show hard limit for tcp buf memory
76	 memory.kmem.tcp.usage_in_bytes  # show current tcp buf memory allocation
77	
78	1. History
79	
80	The memory controller has a long history. A request for comments for the memory
81	controller was posted by Balbir Singh [1]. At the time the RFC was posted
82	there were several implementations for memory control. The goal of the
83	RFC was to build consensus and agreement for the minimal features required
84	for memory control. The first RSS controller was posted by Balbir Singh[2]
85	in Feb 2007. Pavel Emelianov [3][4][5] has since posted three versions of the
86	RSS controller. At OLS, at the resource management BoF, everyone suggested
87	that we handle both page cache and RSS together. Another request was raised
88	to allow user space handling of OOM. The current memory controller is
89	at version 6; it combines both mapped (RSS) and unmapped Page
90	Cache Control [11].
91	
92	2. Memory Control
93	
94	Memory is a unique resource in the sense that it is present in a limited
95	amount. If a task requires a lot of CPU processing, the task can spread
96	its processing over a period of hours, days, months or years, but with
97	memory, the same physical memory needs to be reused to accomplish the task.
98	
99	The memory controller implementation has been divided into phases. These
100	are:
101	
102	1. Memory controller
103	2. mlock(2) controller
104	3. Kernel user memory accounting and slab control
105	4. user mappings length controller
106	
107	The memory controller is the first controller developed.
108	
109	2.1. Design
110	
111	The core of the design is a counter called the res_counter. The res_counter
112	tracks the current memory usage and limit of the group of processes associated
113	with the controller. Each cgroup has a memory controller specific data
114	structure (mem_cgroup) associated with it.
115	
116	2.2. Accounting
117	
118			+--------------------+
119			|  mem_cgroup     |
120			|  (res_counter)     |
121			+--------------------+
122			 /            ^      \
123			/             |       \
124	           +---------------+  |        +---------------+
125	           | mm_struct     |  |....    | mm_struct     |
126	           |               |  |        |               |
127	           +---------------+  |        +---------------+
128	                              |
129	                              + --------------+
130	                                              |
131	           +---------------+           +------+--------+
132	           | page          +---------->  page_cgroup|
133	           |               |           |               |
134	           +---------------+           +---------------+
135	
136	             (Figure 1: Hierarchy of Accounting)
137	
138	
139	Figure 1 shows the important aspects of the controller
140	
141	1. Accounting happens per cgroup
142	2. Each mm_struct knows about which cgroup it belongs to
143	3. Each page has a pointer to the page_cgroup, which in turn knows the
144	   cgroup it belongs to
145	
146	The accounting is done as follows: mem_cgroup_charge() is invoked to setup
147	the necessary data structures and check if the cgroup that is being charged
148	is over its limit. If it is then reclaim is invoked on the cgroup.
149	More details can be found in the reclaim section of this document.
150	If everything goes well, a page meta-data-structure called page_cgroup is
151	updated. page_cgroup has its own LRU on cgroup.
152	(*) page_cgroup structure is allocated at boot/memory-hotplug time.
153	
154	2.2.1 Accounting details
155	
156	All mapped anon pages (RSS) and cache pages (Page Cache) are accounted.
157	Some pages which are never reclaimable and will not be on the global LRU
158	are not accounted. We just account pages under usual VM management.
159	
160	RSS pages are accounted at page_fault unless they've already been accounted
161	for earlier. A file page will be accounted for as Page Cache when it's
162	inserted into inode (radix-tree). While it's mapped into the page tables of
163	processes, duplicate accounting is carefully avoided.
164	
165	A RSS page is unaccounted when it's fully unmapped. A PageCache page is
166	unaccounted when it's removed from radix-tree. Even if RSS pages are fully
167	unmapped (by kswapd), they may exist as SwapCache in the system until they
168	are really freed. Such SwapCaches also also accounted.
169	A swapped-in page is not accounted until it's mapped.
170	
171	Note: The kernel does swapin-readahead and read multiple swaps at once.
172	This means swapped-in pages may contain pages for other tasks than a task
173	causing page fault. So, we avoid accounting at swap-in I/O.
174	
175	At page migration, accounting information is kept.
176	
177	Note: we just account pages-on-LRU because our purpose is to control amount
178	of used pages; not-on-LRU pages tend to be out-of-control from VM view.
179	
180	2.3 Shared Page Accounting
181	
182	Shared pages are accounted on the basis of the first touch approach. The
183	cgroup that first touches a page is accounted for the page. The principle
184	behind this approach is that a cgroup that aggressively uses a shared
185	page will eventually get charged for it (once it is uncharged from
186	the cgroup that brought it in -- this will happen on memory pressure).
187	
188	Exception: If CONFIG_CGROUP_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR_SWAP is not used.
189	When you do swapoff and make swapped-out pages of shmem(tmpfs) to
190	be backed into memory in force, charges for pages are accounted against the
191	caller of swapoff rather than the users of shmem.
192	
193	
194	2.4 Swap Extension (CONFIG_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR_SWAP)
195	
196	Swap Extension allows you to record charge for swap. A swapped-in page is
197	charged back to original page allocator if possible.
198	
199	When swap is accounted, following files are added.
200	 - memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes.
201	 - memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes.
202	
203	memsw means memory+swap. Usage of memory+swap is limited by
204	memsw.limit_in_bytes.
205	
206	Example: Assume a system with 4G of swap. A task which allocates 6G of memory
207	(by mistake) under 2G memory limitation will use all swap.
208	In this case, setting memsw.limit_in_bytes=3G will prevent bad use of swap.
209	By using memsw limit, you can avoid system OOM which can be caused by swap
210	shortage.
211	
212	* why 'memory+swap' rather than swap.
213	The global LRU(kswapd) can swap out arbitrary pages. Swap-out means
214	to move account from memory to swap...there is no change in usage of
215	memory+swap. In other words, when we want to limit the usage of swap without
216	affecting global LRU, memory+swap limit is better than just limiting swap from
217	OS point of view.
218	
219	* What happens when a cgroup hits memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes
220	When a cgroup hits memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes, it's useless to do swap-out
221	in this cgroup. Then, swap-out will not be done by cgroup routine and file
222	caches are dropped. But as mentioned above, global LRU can do swapout memory
223	from it for sanity of the system's memory management state. You can't forbid
224	it by cgroup.
225	
226	2.5 Reclaim
227	
228	Each cgroup maintains a per cgroup LRU which has the same structure as
229	global VM. When a cgroup goes over its limit, we first try
230	to reclaim memory from the cgroup so as to make space for the new
231	pages that the cgroup has touched. If the reclaim is unsuccessful,
232	an OOM routine is invoked to select and kill the bulkiest task in the
233	cgroup. (See 10. OOM Control below.)
234	
235	The reclaim algorithm has not been modified for cgroups, except that
236	pages that are selected for reclaiming come from the per cgroup LRU
237	list.
238	
239	NOTE: Reclaim does not work for the root cgroup, since we cannot set any
240	limits on the root cgroup.
241	
242	Note2: When panic_on_oom is set to "2", the whole system will panic.
243	
244	When oom event notifier is registered, event will be delivered.
245	(See oom_control section)
246	
247	2.6 Locking
248	
249	   lock_page_cgroup()/unlock_page_cgroup() should not be called under
250	   mapping->tree_lock.
251	
252	   Other lock order is following:
253	   PG_locked.
254	   mm->page_table_lock
255	       zone->lru_lock
256		  lock_page_cgroup.
257	  In many cases, just lock_page_cgroup() is called.
258	  per-zone-per-cgroup LRU (cgroup's private LRU) is just guarded by
259	  zone->lru_lock, it has no lock of its own.
260	
261	2.7 Kernel Memory Extension (CONFIG_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR_KMEM)
262	
263	With the Kernel memory extension, the Memory Controller is able to limit
264	the amount of kernel memory used by the system. Kernel memory is fundamentally
265	different than user memory, since it can't be swapped out, which makes it
266	possible to DoS the system by consuming too much of this precious resource.
267	
268	Kernel memory limits are not imposed for the root cgroup. Usage for the root
269	cgroup may or may not be accounted.
270	
271	Currently no soft limit is implemented for kernel memory. It is future work
272	to trigger slab reclaim when those limits are reached.
273	
274	2.7.1 Current Kernel Memory resources accounted
275	
276	* sockets memory pressure: some sockets protocols have memory pressure
277	thresholds. The Memory Controller allows them to be controlled individually
278	per cgroup, instead of globally.
279	
280	* tcp memory pressure: sockets memory pressure for the tcp protocol.
281	
282	3. User Interface
283	
284	0. Configuration
285	
286	a. Enable CONFIG_CGROUPS
287	b. Enable CONFIG_RESOURCE_COUNTERS
288	c. Enable CONFIG_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR
289	d. Enable CONFIG_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR_SWAP (to use swap extension)
290	
291	1. Prepare the cgroups (see cgroups.txt, Why are cgroups needed?)
292	# mount -t tmpfs none /sys/fs/cgroup
293	# mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/memory
294	# mount -t cgroup none /sys/fs/cgroup/memory -o memory
295	
296	2. Make the new group and move bash into it
297	# mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0
298	# echo $$ > /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0/tasks
299	
300	Since now we're in the 0 cgroup, we can alter the memory limit:
301	# echo 4M > /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0/memory.limit_in_bytes
302	
303	NOTE: We can use a suffix (k, K, m, M, g or G) to indicate values in kilo,
304	mega or gigabytes. (Here, Kilo, Mega, Giga are Kibibytes, Mebibytes, Gibibytes.)
305	
306	NOTE: We can write "-1" to reset the *.limit_in_bytes(unlimited).
307	NOTE: We cannot set limits on the root cgroup any more.
308	
309	# cat /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0/memory.limit_in_bytes
310	4194304
311	
312	We can check the usage:
313	# cat /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0/memory.usage_in_bytes
314	1216512
315	
316	A successful write to this file does not guarantee a successful set of
317	this limit to the value written into the file. This can be due to a
318	number of factors, such as rounding up to page boundaries or the total
319	availability of memory on the system. The user is required to re-read
320	this file after a write to guarantee the value committed by the kernel.
321	
322	# echo 1 > memory.limit_in_bytes
323	# cat memory.limit_in_bytes
324	4096
325	
326	The memory.failcnt field gives the number of times that the cgroup limit was
327	exceeded.
328	
329	The memory.stat file gives accounting information. Now, the number of
330	caches, RSS and Active pages/Inactive pages are shown.
331	
332	4. Testing
333	
334	For testing features and implementation, see memcg_test.txt.
335	
336	Performance test is also important. To see pure memory controller's overhead,
337	testing on tmpfs will give you good numbers of small overheads.
338	Example: do kernel make on tmpfs.
339	
340	Page-fault scalability is also important. At measuring parallel
341	page fault test, multi-process test may be better than multi-thread
342	test because it has noise of shared objects/status.
343	
344	But the above two are testing extreme situations.
345	Trying usual test under memory controller is always helpful.
346	
347	4.1 Troubleshooting
348	
349	Sometimes a user might find that the application under a cgroup is
350	terminated by OOM killer. There are several causes for this:
351	
352	1. The cgroup limit is too low (just too low to do anything useful)
353	2. The user is using anonymous memory and swap is turned off or too low
354	
355	A sync followed by echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches will help get rid of
356	some of the pages cached in the cgroup (page cache pages).
357	
358	To know what happens, disable OOM_Kill by 10. OOM Control(see below) and
359	seeing what happens will be helpful.
360	
361	4.2 Task migration
362	
363	When a task migrates from one cgroup to another, its charge is not
364	carried forward by default. The pages allocated from the original cgroup still
365	remain charged to it, the charge is dropped when the page is freed or
366	reclaimed.
367	
368	You can move charges of a task along with task migration.
369	See 8. "Move charges at task migration"
370	
371	4.3 Removing a cgroup
372	
373	A cgroup can be removed by rmdir, but as discussed in sections 4.1 and 4.2, a
374	cgroup might have some charge associated with it, even though all
375	tasks have migrated away from it. (because we charge against pages, not
376	against tasks.)
377	
378	Such charges are freed or moved to their parent. At moving, both of RSS
379	and CACHES are moved to parent.
380	rmdir() may return -EBUSY if freeing/moving fails. See 5.1 also.
381	
382	Charges recorded in swap information is not updated at removal of cgroup.
383	Recorded information is discarded and a cgroup which uses swap (swapcache)
384	will be charged as a new owner of it.
385	
386	
387	5. Misc. interfaces.
388	
389	5.1 force_empty
390	  memory.force_empty interface is provided to make cgroup's memory usage empty.
391	  You can use this interface only when the cgroup has no tasks.
392	  When writing anything to this
393	
394	  # echo 0 > memory.force_empty
395	
396	  Almost all pages tracked by this memory cgroup will be unmapped and freed.
397	  Some pages cannot be freed because they are locked or in-use. Such pages are
398	  moved to parent and this cgroup will be empty. This may return -EBUSY if
399	  VM is too busy to free/move all pages immediately.
400	
401	  Typical use case of this interface is that calling this before rmdir().
402	  Because rmdir() moves all pages to parent, some out-of-use page caches can be
403	  moved to the parent. If you want to avoid that, force_empty will be useful.
404	
405	5.2 stat file
406	
407	memory.stat file includes following statistics
408	
409	# per-memory cgroup local status
410	cache		- # of bytes of page cache memory.
411	rss		- # of bytes of anonymous and swap cache memory.
412	mapped_file	- # of bytes of mapped file (includes tmpfs/shmem)
413	pgpgin		- # of charging events to the memory cgroup. The charging
414			event happens each time a page is accounted as either mapped
415			anon page(RSS) or cache page(Page Cache) to the cgroup.
416	pgpgout		- # of uncharging events to the memory cgroup. The uncharging
417			event happens each time a page is unaccounted from the cgroup.
418	swap		- # of bytes of swap usage
419	inactive_anon	- # of bytes of anonymous memory and swap cache memory on
420			LRU list.
421	active_anon	- # of bytes of anonymous and swap cache memory on active
422			inactive LRU list.
423	inactive_file	- # of bytes of file-backed memory on inactive LRU list.
424	active_file	- # of bytes of file-backed memory on active LRU list.
425	unevictable	- # of bytes of memory that cannot be reclaimed (mlocked etc).
426	
427	# status considering hierarchy (see memory.use_hierarchy settings)
428	
429	hierarchical_memory_limit - # of bytes of memory limit with regard to hierarchy
430				under which the memory cgroup is
431	hierarchical_memsw_limit - # of bytes of memory+swap limit with regard to
432				hierarchy under which memory cgroup is.
433	
434	total_cache		- sum of all children's "cache"
435	total_rss		- sum of all children's "rss"
436	total_mapped_file	- sum of all children's "cache"
437	total_pgpgin		- sum of all children's "pgpgin"
438	total_pgpgout		- sum of all children's "pgpgout"
439	total_swap		- sum of all children's "swap"
440	total_inactive_anon	- sum of all children's "inactive_anon"
441	total_active_anon	- sum of all children's "active_anon"
442	total_inactive_file	- sum of all children's "inactive_file"
443	total_active_file	- sum of all children's "active_file"
444	total_unevictable	- sum of all children's "unevictable"
445	
446	# The following additional stats are dependent on CONFIG_DEBUG_VM.
447	
448	recent_rotated_anon	- VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
449	recent_rotated_file	- VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
450	recent_scanned_anon	- VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
451	recent_scanned_file	- VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
452	
453	Memo:
454		recent_rotated means recent frequency of LRU rotation.
455		recent_scanned means recent # of scans to LRU.
456		showing for better debug please see the code for meanings.
457	
458	Note:
459		Only anonymous and swap cache memory is listed as part of 'rss' stat.
460		This should not be confused with the true 'resident set size' or the
461		amount of physical memory used by the cgroup.
462		'rss + file_mapped" will give you resident set size of cgroup.
463		(Note: file and shmem may be shared among other cgroups. In that case,
464		 file_mapped is accounted only when the memory cgroup is owner of page
465		 cache.)
466	
467	5.3 swappiness
468	
469	Similar to /proc/sys/vm/swappiness, but affecting a hierarchy of groups only.
470	
471	Following cgroups' swappiness can't be changed.
472	- root cgroup (uses /proc/sys/vm/swappiness).
473	- a cgroup which uses hierarchy and it has other cgroup(s) below it.
474	- a cgroup which uses hierarchy and not the root of hierarchy.
475	
476	5.4 failcnt
477	
478	A memory cgroup provides memory.failcnt and memory.memsw.failcnt files.
479	This failcnt(== failure count) shows the number of times that a usage counter
480	hit its limit. When a memory cgroup hits a limit, failcnt increases and
481	memory under it will be reclaimed.
482	
483	You can reset failcnt by writing 0 to failcnt file.
484	# echo 0 > .../memory.failcnt
485	
486	5.5 usage_in_bytes
487	
488	For efficiency, as other kernel components, memory cgroup uses some optimization
489	to avoid unnecessary cacheline false sharing. usage_in_bytes is affected by the
490	method and doesn't show 'exact' value of memory(and swap) usage, it's an fuzz
491	value for efficient access. (Of course, when necessary, it's synchronized.)
492	If you want to know more exact memory usage, you should use RSS+CACHE(+SWAP)
493	value in memory.stat(see 5.2).
494	
495	5.6 numa_stat
496	
497	This is similar to numa_maps but operates on a per-memcg basis.  This is
498	useful for providing visibility into the numa locality information within
499	an memcg since the pages are allowed to be allocated from any physical
500	node.  One of the usecases is evaluating application performance by
501	combining this information with the application's cpu allocation.
502	
503	We export "total", "file", "anon" and "unevictable" pages per-node for
504	each memcg.  The ouput format of memory.numa_stat is:
505	
506	total=<total pages> N0=<node 0 pages> N1=<node 1 pages> ...
507	file=<total file pages> N0=<node 0 pages> N1=<node 1 pages> ...
508	anon=<total anon pages> N0=<node 0 pages> N1=<node 1 pages> ...
509	unevictable=<total anon pages> N0=<node 0 pages> N1=<node 1 pages> ...
510	
511	And we have total = file + anon + unevictable.
512	
513	6. Hierarchy support
514	
515	The memory controller supports a deep hierarchy and hierarchical accounting.
516	The hierarchy is created by creating the appropriate cgroups in the
517	cgroup filesystem. Consider for example, the following cgroup filesystem
518	hierarchy
519	
520		       root
521		     /  |   \
522	            /	|    \
523		   a	b     c
524			      | \
525			      |  \
526			      d   e
527	
528	In the diagram above, with hierarchical accounting enabled, all memory
529	usage of e, is accounted to its ancestors up until the root (i.e, c and root),
530	that has memory.use_hierarchy enabled. If one of the ancestors goes over its
531	limit, the reclaim algorithm reclaims from the tasks in the ancestor and the
532	children of the ancestor.
533	
534	6.1 Enabling hierarchical accounting and reclaim
535	
536	A memory cgroup by default disables the hierarchy feature. Support
537	can be enabled by writing 1 to memory.use_hierarchy file of the root cgroup
538	
539	# echo 1 > memory.use_hierarchy
540	
541	The feature can be disabled by
542	
543	# echo 0 > memory.use_hierarchy
544	
545	NOTE1: Enabling/disabling will fail if either the cgroup already has other
546	       cgroups created below it, or if the parent cgroup has use_hierarchy
547	       enabled.
548	
549	NOTE2: When panic_on_oom is set to "2", the whole system will panic in
550	       case of an OOM event in any cgroup.
551	
552	7. Soft limits
553	
554	Soft limits allow for greater sharing of memory. The idea behind soft limits
555	is to allow control groups to use as much of the memory as needed, provided
556	
557	a. There is no memory contention
558	b. They do not exceed their hard limit
559	
560	When the system detects memory contention or low memory, control groups
561	are pushed back to their soft limits. If the soft limit of each control
562	group is very high, they are pushed back as much as possible to make
563	sure that one control group does not starve the others of memory.
564	
565	Please note that soft limits is a best effort feature, it comes with
566	no guarantees, but it does its best to make sure that when memory is
567	heavily contended for, memory is allocated based on the soft limit
568	hints/setup. Currently soft limit based reclaim is setup such that
569	it gets invoked from balance_pgdat (kswapd).
570	
571	7.1 Interface
572	
573	Soft limits can be setup by using the following commands (in this example we
574	assume a soft limit of 256 MiB)
575	
576	# echo 256M > memory.soft_limit_in_bytes
577	
578	If we want to change this to 1G, we can at any time use
579	
580	# echo 1G > memory.soft_limit_in_bytes
581	
582	NOTE1: Soft limits take effect over a long period of time, since they involve
583	       reclaiming memory for balancing between memory cgroups
584	NOTE2: It is recommended to set the soft limit always below the hard limit,
585	       otherwise the hard limit will take precedence.
586	
587	8. Move charges at task migration
588	
589	Users can move charges associated with a task along with task migration, that
590	is, uncharge task's pages from the old cgroup and charge them to the new cgroup.
591	This feature is not supported in !CONFIG_MMU environments because of lack of
592	page tables.
593	
594	8.1 Interface
595	
596	This feature is disabled by default. It can be enabled(and disabled again) by
597	writing to memory.move_charge_at_immigrate of the destination cgroup.
598	
599	If you want to enable it:
600	
601	# echo (some positive value) > memory.move_charge_at_immigrate
602	
603	Note: Each bits of move_charge_at_immigrate has its own meaning about what type
604	      of charges should be moved. See 8.2 for details.
605	Note: Charges are moved only when you move mm->owner, IOW, a leader of a thread
606	      group.
607	Note: If we cannot find enough space for the task in the destination cgroup, we
608	      try to make space by reclaiming memory. Task migration may fail if we
609	      cannot make enough space.
610	Note: It can take several seconds if you move charges much.
611	
612	And if you want disable it again:
613	
614	# echo 0 > memory.move_charge_at_immigrate
615	
616	8.2 Type of charges which can be move
617	
618	Each bits of move_charge_at_immigrate has its own meaning about what type of
619	charges should be moved. But in any cases, it must be noted that an account of
620	a page or a swap can be moved only when it is charged to the task's current(old)
621	memory cgroup.
622	
623	  bit | what type of charges would be moved ?
624	 -----+------------------------------------------------------------------------
625	   0  | A charge of an anonymous page(or swap of it) used by the target task.
626	      | Those pages and swaps must be used only by the target task. You must
627	      | enable Swap Extension(see 2.4) to enable move of swap charges.
628	 -----+------------------------------------------------------------------------
629	   1  | A charge of file pages(normal file, tmpfs file(e.g. ipc shared memory)
630	      | and swaps of tmpfs file) mmapped by the target task. Unlike the case of
631	      | anonymous pages, file pages(and swaps) in the range mmapped by the task
632	      | will be moved even if the task hasn't done page fault, i.e. they might
633	      | not be the task's "RSS", but other task's "RSS" that maps the same file.
634	      | And mapcount of the page is ignored(the page can be moved even if
635	      | page_mapcount(page) > 1). You must enable Swap Extension(see 2.4) to
636	      | enable move of swap charges.
637	
638	8.3 TODO
639	
640	- Implement madvise(2) to let users decide the vma to be moved or not to be
641	  moved.
642	- All of moving charge operations are done under cgroup_mutex. It's not good
643	  behavior to hold the mutex too long, so we may need some trick.
644	
645	9. Memory thresholds
646	
647	Memory cgroup implements memory thresholds using cgroups notification
648	API (see cgroups.txt). It allows to register multiple memory and memsw
649	thresholds and gets notifications when it crosses.
650	
651	To register a threshold application need:
652	- create an eventfd using eventfd(2);
653	- open memory.usage_in_bytes or memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes;
654	- write string like "<event_fd> <fd of memory.usage_in_bytes> <threshold>" to
655	  cgroup.event_control.
656	
657	Application will be notified through eventfd when memory usage crosses
658	threshold in any direction.
659	
660	It's applicable for root and non-root cgroup.
661	
662	10. OOM Control
663	
664	memory.oom_control file is for OOM notification and other controls.
665	
666	Memory cgroup implements OOM notifier using cgroup notification
667	API (See cgroups.txt). It allows to register multiple OOM notification
668	delivery and gets notification when OOM happens.
669	
670	To register a notifier, application need:
671	 - create an eventfd using eventfd(2)
672	 - open memory.oom_control file
673	 - write string like "<event_fd> <fd of memory.oom_control>" to
674	   cgroup.event_control
675	
676	Application will be notified through eventfd when OOM happens.
677	OOM notification doesn't work for root cgroup.
678	
679	You can disable OOM-killer by writing "1" to memory.oom_control file, as:
680	
681		#echo 1 > memory.oom_control
682	
683	This operation is only allowed to the top cgroup of sub-hierarchy.
684	If OOM-killer is disabled, tasks under cgroup will hang/sleep
685	in memory cgroup's OOM-waitqueue when they request accountable memory.
686	
687	For running them, you have to relax the memory cgroup's OOM status by
688		* enlarge limit or reduce usage.
689	To reduce usage,
690		* kill some tasks.
691		* move some tasks to other group with account migration.
692		* remove some files (on tmpfs?)
693	
694	Then, stopped tasks will work again.
695	
696	At reading, current status of OOM is shown.
697		oom_kill_disable 0 or 1 (if 1, oom-killer is disabled)
698		under_oom	 0 or 1 (if 1, the memory cgroup is under OOM, tasks may
699					 be stopped.)
700	
701	11. TODO
702	
703	1. Add support for accounting huge pages (as a separate controller)
704	2. Make per-cgroup scanner reclaim not-shared pages first
705	3. Teach controller to account for shared-pages
706	4. Start reclamation in the background when the limit is
707	   not yet hit but the usage is getting closer
708	
709	Summary
710	
711	Overall, the memory controller has been a stable controller and has been
712	commented and discussed quite extensively in the community.
713	
714	References
715	
716	1. Singh, Balbir. RFC: Memory Controller, http://lwn.net/Articles/206697/
717	2. Singh, Balbir. Memory Controller (RSS Control),
718	   http://lwn.net/Articles/222762/
719	3. Emelianov, Pavel. Resource controllers based on process cgroups
720	   http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/3/6/198
721	4. Emelianov, Pavel. RSS controller based on process cgroups (v2)
722	   http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/4/9/78
723	5. Emelianov, Pavel. RSS controller based on process cgroups (v3)
724	   http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/30/244
725	6. Menage, Paul. Control Groups v10, http://lwn.net/Articles/236032/
726	7. Vaidyanathan, Srinivasan, Control Groups: Pagecache accounting and control
727	   subsystem (v3), http://lwn.net/Articles/235534/
728	8. Singh, Balbir. RSS controller v2 test results (lmbench),
729	   http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/17/232
730	9. Singh, Balbir. RSS controller v2 AIM9 results
731	   http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/18/1
732	10. Singh, Balbir. Memory controller v6 test results,
733	    http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/19/36
734	11. Singh, Balbir. Memory controller introduction (v6),
735	    http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/17/69
736	12. Corbet, Jonathan, Controlling memory use in cgroups,
737	    http://lwn.net/Articles/243795/
Hide Line Numbers
About Kernel Documentation Linux Kernel Contact Linux Resources Linux Blog

Information is copyright its respective author. All material is available from the Linux Kernel Source distributed under a GPL License. This page is provided as a free service by mjmwired.net.