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/