1.. _cgroup-v2: 2 3================ 4Control Group v2 5================ 6 7:Date: October, 2015 8:Author: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org> 9 10This is the authoritative documentation on the design, interface and 11conventions of cgroup v2. It describes all userland-visible aspects 12of cgroup including core and specific controller behaviors. All 13future changes must be reflected in this document. Documentation for 14v1 is available under :ref:`Documentation/admin-guide/cgroup-v1/index.rst <cgroup-v1>`. 15 16.. CONTENTS 17 18 [Whenever any new section is added to this document, please also add 19 an entry here.] 20 21 1. Introduction 22 1-1. Terminology 23 1-2. What is cgroup? 24 2. Basic Operations 25 2-1. Mounting 26 2-2. Organizing Processes and Threads 27 2-2-1. Processes 28 2-2-2. Threads 29 2-3. [Un]populated Notification 30 2-4. Controlling Controllers 31 2-4-1. Availability 32 2-4-2. Enabling and Disabling 33 2-4-3. Top-down Constraint 34 2-4-4. No Internal Process Constraint 35 2-5. Delegation 36 2-5-1. Model of Delegation 37 2-5-2. Delegation Containment 38 2-6. Guidelines 39 2-6-1. Organize Once and Control 40 2-6-2. Avoid Name Collisions 41 3. Resource Distribution Models 42 3-1. Weights 43 3-2. Limits 44 3-3. Protections 45 3-4. Allocations 46 4. Interface Files 47 4-1. Format 48 4-2. Conventions 49 4-3. Core Interface Files 50 5. Controllers 51 5-1. CPU 52 5-1-1. CPU Interface Files 53 5-2. Memory 54 5-2-1. Memory Interface Files 55 5-2-2. Usage Guidelines 56 5-2-3. Reclaim Protection 57 5-2-4. Memory Ownership 58 5-3. IO 59 5-3-1. IO Interface Files 60 5-3-2. Writeback 61 5-3-3. IO Latency 62 5-3-3-1. How IO Latency Throttling Works 63 5-3-3-2. IO Latency Interface Files 64 5-3-4. IO Priority 65 5-4. PID 66 5-4-1. PID Interface Files 67 5-5. Cpuset 68 5.5-1. Cpuset Interface Files 69 5-6. Device controller 70 5-7. RDMA 71 5-7-1. RDMA Interface Files 72 5-8. DMEM 73 5-8-1. DMEM Interface Files 74 5-9. HugeTLB 75 5.9-1. HugeTLB Interface Files 76 5-10. Misc 77 5.10-1 Misc Interface Files 78 5.10-2 Migration and Ownership 79 5-11. Others 80 5-11-1. perf_event 81 5-N. Non-normative information 82 5-N-1. CPU controller root cgroup process behaviour 83 5-N-2. IO controller root cgroup process behaviour 84 6. Namespace 85 6-1. Basics 86 6-2. The Root and Views 87 6-3. Migration and setns(2) 88 6-4. Interaction with Other Namespaces 89 P. Information on Kernel Programming 90 P-1. Filesystem Support for Writeback 91 D. Deprecated v1 Core Features 92 R. Issues with v1 and Rationales for v2 93 R-1. Multiple Hierarchies 94 R-2. Thread Granularity 95 R-3. Competition Between Inner Nodes and Threads 96 R-4. Other Interface Issues 97 R-5. Controller Issues and Remedies 98 R-5-1. Memory 99 100 101Introduction 102============ 103 104Terminology 105----------- 106 107"cgroup" stands for "control group" and is never capitalized. The 108singular form is used to designate the whole feature and also as a 109qualifier as in "cgroup controllers". When explicitly referring to 110multiple individual control groups, the plural form "cgroups" is used. 111 112 113What is cgroup? 114--------------- 115 116cgroup is a mechanism to organize processes hierarchically and 117distribute system resources along the hierarchy in a controlled and 118configurable manner. 119 120cgroup is largely composed of two parts - the core and controllers. 121cgroup core is primarily responsible for hierarchically organizing 122processes. A cgroup controller is usually responsible for 123distributing a specific type of system resource along the hierarchy 124although there are utility controllers which serve purposes other than 125resource distribution. 126 127cgroups form a tree structure and every process in the system belongs 128to one and only one cgroup. All threads of a process belong to the 129same cgroup. On creation, all processes are put in the cgroup that 130the parent process belongs to at the time. A process can be migrated 131to another cgroup. Migration of a process doesn't affect already 132existing descendant processes. 133 134Following certain structural constraints, controllers may be enabled or 135disabled selectively on a cgroup. All controller behaviors are 136hierarchical - if a controller is enabled on a cgroup, it affects all 137processes which belong to the cgroups consisting the inclusive 138sub-hierarchy of the cgroup. When a controller is enabled on a nested 139cgroup, it always restricts the resource distribution further. The 140restrictions set closer to the root in the hierarchy can not be 141overridden from further away. 142 143 144Basic Operations 145================ 146 147Mounting 148-------- 149 150Unlike v1, cgroup v2 has only single hierarchy. The cgroup v2 151hierarchy can be mounted with the following mount command:: 152 153 # mount -t cgroup2 none $MOUNT_POINT 154 155cgroup2 filesystem has the magic number 0x63677270 ("cgrp"). All 156controllers which support v2 and are not bound to a v1 hierarchy are 157automatically bound to the v2 hierarchy and show up at the root. 158Controllers which are not in active use in the v2 hierarchy can be 159bound to other hierarchies. This allows mixing v2 hierarchy with the 160legacy v1 multiple hierarchies in a fully backward compatible way. 161 162A controller can be moved across hierarchies only after the controller 163is no longer referenced in its current hierarchy. Because per-cgroup 164controller states are destroyed asynchronously and controllers may 165have lingering references, a controller may not show up immediately on 166the v2 hierarchy after the final umount of the previous hierarchy. 167Similarly, a controller should be fully disabled to be moved out of 168the unified hierarchy and it may take some time for the disabled 169controller to become available for other hierarchies; furthermore, due 170to inter-controller dependencies, other controllers may need to be 171disabled too. 172 173While useful for development and manual configurations, moving 174controllers dynamically between the v2 and other hierarchies is 175strongly discouraged for production use. It is recommended to decide 176the hierarchies and controller associations before starting using the 177controllers after system boot. 178 179During transition to v2, system management software might still 180automount the v1 cgroup filesystem and so hijack all controllers 181during boot, before manual intervention is possible. To make testing 182and experimenting easier, the kernel parameter cgroup_no_v1= allows 183disabling controllers in v1 and make them always available in v2. 184 185cgroup v2 currently supports the following mount options. 186 187 nsdelegate 188 Consider cgroup namespaces as delegation boundaries. This 189 option is system wide and can only be set on mount or modified 190 through remount from the init namespace. The mount option is 191 ignored on non-init namespace mounts. Please refer to the 192 Delegation section for details. 193 194 favordynmods 195 Reduce the latencies of dynamic cgroup modifications such as 196 task migrations and controller on/offs at the cost of making 197 hot path operations such as forks and exits more expensive. 198 The static usage pattern of creating a cgroup, enabling 199 controllers, and then seeding it with CLONE_INTO_CGROUP is 200 not affected by this option. 201 202 memory_localevents 203 Only populate memory.events with data for the current cgroup, 204 and not any subtrees. This is legacy behaviour, the default 205 behaviour without this option is to include subtree counts. 206 This option is system wide and can only be set on mount or 207 modified through remount from the init namespace. The mount 208 option is ignored on non-init namespace mounts. 209 210 memory_recursiveprot 211 Recursively apply memory.min and memory.low protection to 212 entire subtrees, without requiring explicit downward 213 propagation into leaf cgroups. This allows protecting entire 214 subtrees from one another, while retaining free competition 215 within those subtrees. This should have been the default 216 behavior but is a mount-option to avoid regressing setups 217 relying on the original semantics (e.g. specifying bogusly 218 high 'bypass' protection values at higher tree levels). 219 220 memory_hugetlb_accounting 221 Count HugeTLB memory usage towards the cgroup's overall 222 memory usage for the memory controller (for the purpose of 223 statistics reporting and memory protection). This is a new 224 behavior that could regress existing setups, so it must be 225 explicitly opted in with this mount option. 226 227 A few caveats to keep in mind: 228 229 * There is no HugeTLB pool management involved in the memory 230 controller. The pre-allocated pool does not belong to anyone. 231 Specifically, when a new HugeTLB folio is allocated to 232 the pool, it is not accounted for from the perspective of the 233 memory controller. It is only charged to a cgroup when it is 234 actually used (for e.g at page fault time). Host memory 235 overcommit management has to consider this when configuring 236 hard limits. In general, HugeTLB pool management should be 237 done via other mechanisms (such as the HugeTLB controller). 238 * Failure to charge a HugeTLB folio to the memory controller 239 results in SIGBUS. This could happen even if the HugeTLB pool 240 still has pages available (but the cgroup limit is hit and 241 reclaim attempt fails). 242 * Charging HugeTLB memory towards the memory controller affects 243 memory protection and reclaim dynamics. Any userspace tuning 244 (of low, min limits for e.g) needs to take this into account. 245 * HugeTLB pages utilized while this option is not selected 246 will not be tracked by the memory controller (even if cgroup 247 v2 is remounted later on). 248 249 pids_localevents 250 The option restores v1-like behavior of pids.events:max, that is only 251 local (inside cgroup proper) fork failures are counted. Without this 252 option pids.events.max represents any pids.max enforcemnt across 253 cgroup's subtree. 254 255 256 257Organizing Processes and Threads 258-------------------------------- 259 260Processes 261~~~~~~~~~ 262 263Initially, only the root cgroup exists to which all processes belong. 264A child cgroup can be created by creating a sub-directory:: 265 266 # mkdir $CGROUP_NAME 267 268A given cgroup may have multiple child cgroups forming a tree 269structure. Each cgroup has a read-writable interface file 270"cgroup.procs". When read, it lists the PIDs of all processes which 271belong to the cgroup one-per-line. The PIDs are not ordered and the 272same PID may show up more than once if the process got moved to 273another cgroup and then back or the PID got recycled while reading. 274 275A process can be migrated into a cgroup by writing its PID to the 276target cgroup's "cgroup.procs" file. Only one process can be migrated 277on a single write(2) call. If a process is composed of multiple 278threads, writing the PID of any thread migrates all threads of the 279process. 280 281When a process forks a child process, the new process is born into the 282cgroup that the forking process belongs to at the time of the 283operation. After exit, a process stays associated with the cgroup 284that it belonged to at the time of exit until it's reaped; however, a 285zombie process does not appear in "cgroup.procs" and thus can't be 286moved to another cgroup. 287 288A cgroup which doesn't have any children or live processes can be 289destroyed by removing the directory. Note that a cgroup which doesn't 290have any children and is associated only with zombie processes is 291considered empty and can be removed:: 292 293 # rmdir $CGROUP_NAME 294 295"/proc/$PID/cgroup" lists a process's cgroup membership. If legacy 296cgroup is in use in the system, this file may contain multiple lines, 297one for each hierarchy. The entry for cgroup v2 is always in the 298format "0::$PATH":: 299 300 # cat /proc/842/cgroup 301 ... 302 0::/test-cgroup/test-cgroup-nested 303 304If the process becomes a zombie and the cgroup it was associated with 305is removed subsequently, " (deleted)" is appended to the path:: 306 307 # cat /proc/842/cgroup 308 ... 309 0::/test-cgroup/test-cgroup-nested (deleted) 310 311 312Threads 313~~~~~~~ 314 315cgroup v2 supports thread granularity for a subset of controllers to 316support use cases requiring hierarchical resource distribution across 317the threads of a group of processes. By default, all threads of a 318process belong to the same cgroup, which also serves as the resource 319domain to host resource consumptions which are not specific to a 320process or thread. The thread mode allows threads to be spread across 321a subtree while still maintaining the common resource domain for them. 322 323Controllers which support thread mode are called threaded controllers. 324The ones which don't are called domain controllers. 325 326Marking a cgroup threaded makes it join the resource domain of its 327parent as a threaded cgroup. The parent may be another threaded 328cgroup whose resource domain is further up in the hierarchy. The root 329of a threaded subtree, that is, the nearest ancestor which is not 330threaded, is called threaded domain or thread root interchangeably and 331serves as the resource domain for the entire subtree. 332 333Inside a threaded subtree, threads of a process can be put in 334different cgroups and are not subject to the no internal process 335constraint - threaded controllers can be enabled on non-leaf cgroups 336whether they have threads in them or not. 337 338As the threaded domain cgroup hosts all the domain resource 339consumptions of the subtree, it is considered to have internal 340resource consumptions whether there are processes in it or not and 341can't have populated child cgroups which aren't threaded. Because the 342root cgroup is not subject to no internal process constraint, it can 343serve both as a threaded domain and a parent to domain cgroups. 344 345The current operation mode or type of the cgroup is shown in the 346"cgroup.type" file which indicates whether the cgroup is a normal 347domain, a domain which is serving as the domain of a threaded subtree, 348or a threaded cgroup. 349 350On creation, a cgroup is always a domain cgroup and can be made 351threaded by writing "threaded" to the "cgroup.type" file. The 352operation is single direction:: 353 354 # echo threaded > cgroup.type 355 356Once threaded, the cgroup can't be made a domain again. To enable the 357thread mode, the following conditions must be met. 358 359- As the cgroup will join the parent's resource domain. The parent 360 must either be a valid (threaded) domain or a threaded cgroup. 361 362- When the parent is an unthreaded domain, it must not have any domain 363 controllers enabled or populated domain children. The root is 364 exempt from this requirement. 365 366Topology-wise, a cgroup can be in an invalid state. Please consider 367the following topology:: 368 369 A (threaded domain) - B (threaded) - C (domain, just created) 370 371C is created as a domain but isn't connected to a parent which can 372host child domains. C can't be used until it is turned into a 373threaded cgroup. "cgroup.type" file will report "domain (invalid)" in 374these cases. Operations which fail due to invalid topology use 375EOPNOTSUPP as the errno. 376 377A domain cgroup is turned into a threaded domain when one of its child 378cgroup becomes threaded or threaded controllers are enabled in the 379"cgroup.subtree_control" file while there are processes in the cgroup. 380A threaded domain reverts to a normal domain when the conditions 381clear. 382 383When read, "cgroup.threads" contains the list of the thread IDs of all 384threads in the cgroup. Except that the operations are per-thread 385instead of per-process, "cgroup.threads" has the same format and 386behaves the same way as "cgroup.procs". While "cgroup.threads" can be 387written to in any cgroup, as it can only move threads inside the same 388threaded domain, its operations are confined inside each threaded 389subtree. 390 391The threaded domain cgroup serves as the resource domain for the whole 392subtree, and, while the threads can be scattered across the subtree, 393all the processes are considered to be in the threaded domain cgroup. 394"cgroup.procs" in a threaded domain cgroup contains the PIDs of all 395processes in the subtree and is not readable in the subtree proper. 396However, "cgroup.procs" can be written to from anywhere in the subtree 397to migrate all threads of the matching process to the cgroup. 398 399Only threaded controllers can be enabled in a threaded subtree. When 400a threaded controller is enabled inside a threaded subtree, it only 401accounts for and controls resource consumptions associated with the 402threads in the cgroup and its descendants. All consumptions which 403aren't tied to a specific thread belong to the threaded domain cgroup. 404 405Because a threaded subtree is exempt from no internal process 406constraint, a threaded controller must be able to handle competition 407between threads in a non-leaf cgroup and its child cgroups. Each 408threaded controller defines how such competitions are handled. 409 410Currently, the following controllers are threaded and can be enabled 411in a threaded cgroup:: 412 413- cpu 414- cpuset 415- perf_event 416- pids 417 418[Un]populated Notification 419-------------------------- 420 421Each non-root cgroup has a "cgroup.events" file which contains 422"populated" field indicating whether the cgroup's sub-hierarchy has 423live processes in it. Its value is 0 if there is no live process in 424the cgroup and its descendants; otherwise, 1. poll and [id]notify 425events are triggered when the value changes. This can be used, for 426example, to start a clean-up operation after all processes of a given 427sub-hierarchy have exited. The populated state updates and 428notifications are recursive. Consider the following sub-hierarchy 429where the numbers in the parentheses represent the numbers of processes 430in each cgroup:: 431 432 A(4) - B(0) - C(1) 433 \ D(0) 434 435A, B and C's "populated" fields would be 1 while D's 0. After the one 436process in C exits, B and C's "populated" fields would flip to "0" and 437file modified events will be generated on the "cgroup.events" files of 438both cgroups. 439 440 441Controlling Controllers 442----------------------- 443 444Availability 445~~~~~~~~~~~~ 446 447A controller is available in a cgroup when it is supported by the kernel (i.e., 448compiled in, not disabled and not attached to a v1 hierarchy) and listed in the 449"cgroup.controllers" file. Availability means the controller's interface files 450are exposed in the cgroup’s directory, allowing the distribution of the target 451resource to be observed or controlled within that cgroup. 452 453Enabling and Disabling 454~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 455 456Each cgroup has a "cgroup.controllers" file which lists all 457controllers available for the cgroup to enable:: 458 459 # cat cgroup.controllers 460 cpu io memory 461 462No controller is enabled by default. Controllers can be enabled and 463disabled by writing to the "cgroup.subtree_control" file:: 464 465 # echo "+cpu +memory -io" > cgroup.subtree_control 466 467Only controllers which are listed in "cgroup.controllers" can be 468enabled. When multiple operations are specified as above, either they 469all succeed or fail. If multiple operations on the same controller 470are specified, the last one is effective. 471 472Enabling a controller in a cgroup indicates that the distribution of 473the target resource across its immediate children will be controlled. 474Consider the following sub-hierarchy. The enabled controllers are 475listed in parentheses:: 476 477 A(cpu,memory) - B(memory) - C() 478 \ D() 479 480As A has "cpu" and "memory" enabled, A will control the distribution 481of CPU cycles and memory to its children, in this case, B. As B has 482"memory" enabled but not "CPU", C and D will compete freely on CPU 483cycles but their division of memory available to B will be controlled. 484 485As a controller regulates the distribution of the target resource to 486the cgroup's children, enabling it creates the controller's interface 487files in the child cgroups. In the above example, enabling "cpu" on B 488would create the "cpu." prefixed controller interface files in C and 489D. Likewise, disabling "memory" from B would remove the "memory." 490prefixed controller interface files from C and D. This means that the 491controller interface files - anything which doesn't start with 492"cgroup." are owned by the parent rather than the cgroup itself. 493 494 495Top-down Constraint 496~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 497 498Resources are distributed top-down and a cgroup can further distribute 499a resource only if the resource has been distributed to it from the 500parent. This means that all non-root "cgroup.subtree_control" files 501can only contain controllers which are enabled in the parent's 502"cgroup.subtree_control" file. A controller can be enabled only if 503the parent has the controller enabled and a controller can't be 504disabled if one or more children have it enabled. 505 506 507No Internal Process Constraint 508~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 509 510Non-root cgroups can distribute domain resources to their children 511only when they don't have any processes of their own. In other words, 512only domain cgroups which don't contain any processes can have domain 513controllers enabled in their "cgroup.subtree_control" files. 514 515This guarantees that, when a domain controller is looking at the part 516of the hierarchy which has it enabled, processes are always only on 517the leaves. This rules out situations where child cgroups compete 518against internal processes of the parent. 519 520The root cgroup is exempt from this restriction. Root contains 521processes and anonymous resource consumption which can't be associated 522with any other cgroups and requires special treatment from most 523controllers. How resource consumption in the root cgroup is governed 524is up to each controller (for more information on this topic please 525refer to the Non-normative information section in the Controllers 526chapter). 527 528Note that the restriction doesn't get in the way if there is no 529enabled controller in the cgroup's "cgroup.subtree_control". This is 530important as otherwise it wouldn't be possible to create children of a 531populated cgroup. To control resource distribution of a cgroup, the 532cgroup must create children and transfer all its processes to the 533children before enabling controllers in its "cgroup.subtree_control" 534file. 535 536 537Delegation 538---------- 539 540Model of Delegation 541~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 542 543A cgroup can be delegated in two ways. First, to a less privileged 544user by granting write access of the directory and its "cgroup.procs", 545"cgroup.threads" and "cgroup.subtree_control" files to the user. 546Second, if the "nsdelegate" mount option is set, automatically to a 547cgroup namespace on namespace creation. 548 549Because the resource control interface files in a given directory 550control the distribution of the parent's resources, the delegatee 551shouldn't be allowed to write to them. For the first method, this is 552achieved by not granting access to these files. For the second, files 553outside the namespace should be hidden from the delegatee by the means 554of at least mount namespacing, and the kernel rejects writes to all 555files on a namespace root from inside the cgroup namespace, except for 556those files listed in "/sys/kernel/cgroup/delegate" (including 557"cgroup.procs", "cgroup.threads", "cgroup.subtree_control", etc.). 558 559The end results are equivalent for both delegation types. Once 560delegated, the user can build sub-hierarchy under the directory, 561organize processes inside it as it sees fit and further distribute the 562resources it received from the parent. The limits and other settings 563of all resource controllers are hierarchical and regardless of what 564happens in the delegated sub-hierarchy, nothing can escape the 565resource restrictions imposed by the parent. 566 567Currently, cgroup doesn't impose any restrictions on the number of 568cgroups in or nesting depth of a delegated sub-hierarchy; however, 569this may be limited explicitly in the future. 570 571 572Delegation Containment 573~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 574 575A delegated sub-hierarchy is contained in the sense that processes 576can't be moved into or out of the sub-hierarchy by the delegatee. 577 578For delegations to a less privileged user, this is achieved by 579requiring the following conditions for a process with a non-root euid 580to migrate a target process into a cgroup by writing its PID to the 581"cgroup.procs" file. 582 583- The writer must have write access to the "cgroup.procs" file. 584 585- The writer must have write access to the "cgroup.procs" file of the 586 common ancestor of the source and destination cgroups. 587 588The above two constraints ensure that while a delegatee may migrate 589processes around freely in the delegated sub-hierarchy it can't pull 590in from or push out to outside the sub-hierarchy. 591 592For an example, let's assume cgroups C0 and C1 have been delegated to 593user U0 who created C00, C01 under C0 and C10 under C1 as follows and 594all processes under C0 and C1 belong to U0:: 595 596 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - C0 - C00 597 ~ cgroup ~ \ C01 598 ~ hierarchy ~ 599 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - C1 - C10 600 601Let's also say U0 wants to write the PID of a process which is 602currently in C10 into "C00/cgroup.procs". U0 has write access to the 603file; however, the common ancestor of the source cgroup C10 and the 604destination cgroup C00 is above the points of delegation and U0 would 605not have write access to its "cgroup.procs" files and thus the write 606will be denied with -EACCES. 607 608For delegations to namespaces, containment is achieved by requiring 609that both the source and destination cgroups are reachable from the 610namespace of the process which is attempting the migration. If either 611is not reachable, the migration is rejected with -ENOENT. 612 613 614Guidelines 615---------- 616 617Organize Once and Control 618~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 619 620Migrating a process across cgroups is a relatively expensive operation 621and stateful resources such as memory are not moved together with the 622process. This is an explicit design decision as there often exist 623inherent trade-offs between migration and various hot paths in terms 624of synchronization cost. 625 626As such, migrating processes across cgroups frequently as a means to 627apply different resource restrictions is discouraged. A workload 628should be assigned to a cgroup according to the system's logical and 629resource structure once on start-up. Dynamic adjustments to resource 630distribution can be made by changing controller configuration through 631the interface files. 632 633 634Avoid Name Collisions 635~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 636 637Interface files for a cgroup and its children cgroups occupy the same 638directory and it is possible to create children cgroups which collide 639with interface files. 640 641All cgroup core interface files are prefixed with "cgroup." and each 642controller's interface files are prefixed with the controller name and 643a dot. A controller's name is composed of lower case alphabets and 644'_'s but never begins with an '_' so it can be used as the prefix 645character for collision avoidance. Also, interface file names won't 646start or end with terms which are often used in categorizing workloads 647such as job, service, slice, unit or workload. 648 649cgroup doesn't do anything to prevent name collisions and it's the 650user's responsibility to avoid them. 651 652 653Resource Distribution Models 654============================ 655 656cgroup controllers implement several resource distribution schemes 657depending on the resource type and expected use cases. This section 658describes major schemes in use along with their expected behaviors. 659 660 661Weights 662------- 663 664A parent's resource is distributed by adding up the weights of all 665active children and giving each the fraction matching the ratio of its 666weight against the sum. As only children which can make use of the 667resource at the moment participate in the distribution, this is 668work-conserving. Due to the dynamic nature, this model is usually 669used for stateless resources. 670 671All weights are in the range [1, 10000] with the default at 100. This 672allows symmetric multiplicative biases in both directions at fine 673enough granularity while staying in the intuitive range. 674 675As long as the weight is in range, all configuration combinations are 676valid and there is no reason to reject configuration changes or 677process migrations. 678 679"cpu.weight" proportionally distributes CPU cycles to active children 680and is an example of this type. 681 682 683.. _cgroupv2-limits-distributor: 684 685Limits 686------ 687 688A child can only consume up to the configured amount of the resource. 689Limits can be over-committed - the sum of the limits of children can 690exceed the amount of resource available to the parent. 691 692Limits are in the range [0, max] and defaults to "max", which is noop. 693 694As limits can be over-committed, all configuration combinations are 695valid and there is no reason to reject configuration changes or 696process migrations. 697 698"io.max" limits the maximum BPS and/or IOPS that a cgroup can consume 699on an IO device and is an example of this type. 700 701.. _cgroupv2-protections-distributor: 702 703Protections 704----------- 705 706A cgroup is protected up to the configured amount of the resource 707as long as the usages of all its ancestors are under their 708protected levels. Protections can be hard guarantees or best effort 709soft boundaries. Protections can also be over-committed in which case 710only up to the amount available to the parent is protected among 711children. 712 713Protections are in the range [0, max] and defaults to 0, which is 714noop. 715 716As protections can be over-committed, all configuration combinations 717are valid and there is no reason to reject configuration changes or 718process migrations. 719 720"memory.low" implements best-effort memory protection and is an 721example of this type. 722 723 724Allocations 725----------- 726 727A cgroup is exclusively allocated a certain amount of a finite 728resource. Allocations can't be over-committed - the sum of the 729allocations of children can not exceed the amount of resource 730available to the parent. 731 732Allocations are in the range [0, max] and defaults to 0, which is no 733resource. 734 735As allocations can't be over-committed, some configuration 736combinations are invalid and should be rejected. Also, if the 737resource is mandatory for execution of processes, process migrations 738may be rejected. 739 740 741Interface Files 742=============== 743 744Format 745------ 746 747All interface files should be in one of the following formats whenever 748possible:: 749 750 New-line separated values 751 (when only one value can be written at once) 752 753 VAL0\n 754 VAL1\n 755 ... 756 757 Space separated values 758 (when read-only or multiple values can be written at once) 759 760 VAL0 VAL1 ...\n 761 762 Flat keyed 763 764 KEY0 VAL0\n 765 KEY1 VAL1\n 766 ... 767 768 Nested keyed 769 770 KEY0 SUB_KEY0=VAL00 SUB_KEY1=VAL01... 771 KEY1 SUB_KEY0=VAL10 SUB_KEY1=VAL11... 772 ... 773 774For a writable file, the format for writing should generally match 775reading; however, controllers may allow omitting later fields or 776implement restricted shortcuts for most common use cases. 777 778For both flat and nested keyed files, only the values for a single key 779can be written at a time. For nested keyed files, the sub key pairs 780may be specified in any order and not all pairs have to be specified. 781 782 783Conventions 784----------- 785 786- Settings for a single feature should be contained in a single file. 787 788- The root cgroup should be exempt from resource control and thus 789 shouldn't have resource control interface files. 790 791- The default time unit is microseconds. If a different unit is ever 792 used, an explicit unit suffix must be present. 793 794- A parts-per quantity should use a percentage decimal with at least 795 two digit fractional part - e.g. 13.40. 796 797- If a controller implements weight based resource distribution, its 798 interface file should be named "weight" and have the range [1, 799 10000] with 100 as the default. The values are chosen to allow 800 enough and symmetric bias in both directions while keeping it 801 intuitive (the default is 100%). 802 803- If a controller implements an absolute resource guarantee and/or 804 limit, the interface files should be named "min" and "max" 805 respectively. If a controller implements best effort resource 806 guarantee and/or limit, the interface files should be named "low" 807 and "high" respectively. 808 809 In the above four control files, the special token "max" should be 810 used to represent upward infinity for both reading and writing. 811 812- If a setting has a configurable default value and keyed specific 813 overrides, the default entry should be keyed with "default" and 814 appear as the first entry in the file. 815 816 The default value can be updated by writing either "default $VAL" or 817 "$VAL". 818 819 When writing to update a specific override, "default" can be used as 820 the value to indicate removal of the override. Override entries 821 with "default" as the value must not appear when read. 822 823 For example, a setting which is keyed by major:minor device numbers 824 with integer values may look like the following:: 825 826 # cat cgroup-example-interface-file 827 default 150 828 8:0 300 829 830 The default value can be updated by:: 831 832 # echo 125 > cgroup-example-interface-file 833 834 or:: 835 836 # echo "default 125" > cgroup-example-interface-file 837 838 An override can be set by:: 839 840 # echo "8:16 170" > cgroup-example-interface-file 841 842 and cleared by:: 843 844 # echo "8:0 default" > cgroup-example-interface-file 845 # cat cgroup-example-interface-file 846 default 125 847 8:16 170 848 849- For events which are not very high frequency, an interface file 850 "events" should be created which lists event key value pairs. 851 Whenever a notifiable event happens, file modified event should be 852 generated on the file. 853 854 855Core Interface Files 856-------------------- 857 858All cgroup core files are prefixed with "cgroup." 859 860 cgroup.type 861 A read-write single value file which exists on non-root 862 cgroups. 863 864 When read, it indicates the current type of the cgroup, which 865 can be one of the following values. 866 867 - "domain" : A normal valid domain cgroup. 868 869 - "domain threaded" : A threaded domain cgroup which is 870 serving as the root of a threaded subtree. 871 872 - "domain invalid" : A cgroup which is in an invalid state. 873 It can't be populated or have controllers enabled. It may 874 be allowed to become a threaded cgroup. 875 876 - "threaded" : A threaded cgroup which is a member of a 877 threaded subtree. 878 879 A cgroup can be turned into a threaded cgroup by writing 880 "threaded" to this file. 881 882 cgroup.procs 883 A read-write new-line separated values file which exists on 884 all cgroups. 885 886 When read, it lists the PIDs of all processes which belong to 887 the cgroup one-per-line. The PIDs are not ordered and the 888 same PID may show up more than once if the process got moved 889 to another cgroup and then back or the PID got recycled while 890 reading. 891 892 A PID can be written to migrate the process associated with 893 the PID to the cgroup. The writer should match all of the 894 following conditions. 895 896 - It must have write access to the "cgroup.procs" file. 897 898 - It must have write access to the "cgroup.procs" file of the 899 common ancestor of the source and destination cgroups. 900 901 When delegating a sub-hierarchy, write access to this file 902 should be granted along with the containing directory. 903 904 In a threaded cgroup, reading this file fails with EOPNOTSUPP 905 as all the processes belong to the thread root. Writing is 906 supported and moves every thread of the process to the cgroup. 907 908 cgroup.threads 909 A read-write new-line separated values file which exists on 910 all cgroups. 911 912 When read, it lists the TIDs of all threads which belong to 913 the cgroup one-per-line. The TIDs are not ordered and the 914 same TID may show up more than once if the thread got moved to 915 another cgroup and then back or the TID got recycled while 916 reading. 917 918 A TID can be written to migrate the thread associated with the 919 TID to the cgroup. The writer should match all of the 920 following conditions. 921 922 - It must have write access to the "cgroup.threads" file. 923 924 - The cgroup that the thread is currently in must be in the 925 same resource domain as the destination cgroup. 926 927 - It must have write access to the "cgroup.procs" file of the 928 common ancestor of the source and destination cgroups. 929 930 When delegating a sub-hierarchy, write access to this file 931 should be granted along with the containing directory. 932 933 cgroup.controllers 934 A read-only space separated values file which exists on all 935 cgroups. 936 937 It shows space separated list of all controllers available to 938 the cgroup. The controllers are not ordered. 939 940 cgroup.subtree_control 941 A read-write space separated values file which exists on all 942 cgroups. Starts out empty. 943 944 When read, it shows space separated list of the controllers 945 which are enabled to control resource distribution from the 946 cgroup to its children. 947 948 Space separated list of controllers prefixed with '+' or '-' 949 can be written to enable or disable controllers. A controller 950 name prefixed with '+' enables the controller and '-' 951 disables. If a controller appears more than once on the list, 952 the last one is effective. When multiple enable and disable 953 operations are specified, either all succeed or all fail. 954 955 cgroup.events 956 A read-only flat-keyed file which exists on non-root cgroups. 957 The following entries are defined. Unless specified 958 otherwise, a value change in this file generates a file 959 modified event. 960 961 populated 962 1 if the cgroup or its descendants contains any live 963 processes; otherwise, 0. 964 frozen 965 1 if the cgroup is frozen; otherwise, 0. 966 967 cgroup.max.descendants 968 A read-write single value files. The default is "max". 969 970 Maximum allowed number of descent cgroups. 971 If the actual number of descendants is equal or larger, 972 an attempt to create a new cgroup in the hierarchy will fail. 973 974 cgroup.max.depth 975 A read-write single value files. The default is "max". 976 977 Maximum allowed descent depth below the current cgroup. 978 If the actual descent depth is equal or larger, 979 an attempt to create a new child cgroup will fail. 980 981 cgroup.stat 982 A read-only flat-keyed file with the following entries: 983 984 nr_descendants 985 Total number of visible descendant cgroups. 986 987 nr_dying_descendants 988 Total number of dying descendant cgroups. A cgroup becomes 989 dying after being deleted by a user. The cgroup will remain 990 in dying state for some time undefined time (which can depend 991 on system load) before being completely destroyed. 992 993 A process can't enter a dying cgroup under any circumstances, 994 a dying cgroup can't revive. 995 996 A dying cgroup can consume system resources not exceeding 997 limits, which were active at the moment of cgroup deletion. 998 999 nr_subsys_<cgroup_subsys> 1000 Total number of live cgroup subsystems (e.g memory 1001 cgroup) at and beneath the current cgroup. 1002 1003 nr_dying_subsys_<cgroup_subsys> 1004 Total number of dying cgroup subsystems (e.g. memory 1005 cgroup) at and beneath the current cgroup. 1006 1007 cgroup.stat.local 1008 A read-only flat-keyed file which exists in non-root cgroups. 1009 The following entry is defined: 1010 1011 frozen_usec 1012 Cumulative time that this cgroup has spent between freezing and 1013 thawing, regardless of whether by self or ancestor groups. 1014 NB: (not) reaching "frozen" state is not accounted here. 1015 1016 Using the following ASCII representation of a cgroup's freezer 1017 state, :: 1018 1019 1 _____ 1020 frozen 0 __/ \__ 1021 ab cd 1022 1023 the duration being measured is the span between a and c. 1024 1025 cgroup.freeze 1026 A read-write single value file which exists on non-root cgroups. 1027 Allowed values are "0" and "1". The default is "0". 1028 1029 Writing "1" to the file causes freezing of the cgroup and all 1030 descendant cgroups. This means that all belonging processes will 1031 be stopped and will not run until the cgroup will be explicitly 1032 unfrozen. Freezing of the cgroup may take some time; when this action 1033 is completed, the "frozen" value in the cgroup.events control file 1034 will be updated to "1" and the corresponding notification will be 1035 issued. 1036 1037 A cgroup can be frozen either by its own settings, or by settings 1038 of any ancestor cgroups. If any of ancestor cgroups is frozen, the 1039 cgroup will remain frozen. 1040 1041 Processes in the frozen cgroup can be killed by a fatal signal. 1042 They also can enter and leave a frozen cgroup: either by an explicit 1043 move by a user, or if freezing of the cgroup races with fork(). 1044 If a process is moved to a frozen cgroup, it stops. If a process is 1045 moved out of a frozen cgroup, it becomes running. 1046 1047 Frozen status of a cgroup doesn't affect any cgroup tree operations: 1048 it's possible to delete a frozen (and empty) cgroup, as well as 1049 create new sub-cgroups. 1050 1051 cgroup.kill 1052 A write-only single value file which exists in non-root cgroups. 1053 The only allowed value is "1". 1054 1055 Writing "1" to the file causes the cgroup and all descendant cgroups to 1056 be killed. This means that all processes located in the affected cgroup 1057 tree will be killed via SIGKILL. 1058 1059 Killing a cgroup tree will deal with concurrent forks appropriately and 1060 is protected against migrations. 1061 1062 In a threaded cgroup, writing this file fails with EOPNOTSUPP as 1063 killing cgroups is a process directed operation, i.e. it affects 1064 the whole thread-group. 1065 1066 cgroup.pressure 1067 A read-write single value file that allowed values are "0" and "1". 1068 The default is "1". 1069 1070 Writing "0" to the file will disable the cgroup PSI accounting. 1071 Writing "1" to the file will re-enable the cgroup PSI accounting. 1072 1073 This control attribute is not hierarchical, so disable or enable PSI 1074 accounting in a cgroup does not affect PSI accounting in descendants 1075 and doesn't need pass enablement via ancestors from root. 1076 1077 The reason this control attribute exists is that PSI accounts stalls for 1078 each cgroup separately and aggregates it at each level of the hierarchy. 1079 This may cause non-negligible overhead for some workloads when under 1080 deep level of the hierarchy, in which case this control attribute can 1081 be used to disable PSI accounting in the non-leaf cgroups. 1082 1083 irq.pressure 1084 A read-write nested-keyed file. 1085 1086 Shows pressure stall information for IRQ/SOFTIRQ. See 1087 :ref:`Documentation/accounting/psi.rst <psi>` for details. 1088 1089Controllers 1090=========== 1091 1092.. _cgroup-v2-cpu: 1093 1094CPU 1095--- 1096 1097The "cpu" controllers regulates distribution of CPU cycles. This 1098controller implements weight and absolute bandwidth limit models for 1099normal scheduling policy and absolute bandwidth allocation model for 1100realtime scheduling policy. 1101 1102In all the above models, cycles distribution is defined only on a temporal 1103base and it does not account for the frequency at which tasks are executed. 1104The (optional) utilization clamping support allows to hint the schedutil 1105cpufreq governor about the minimum desired frequency which should always be 1106provided by a CPU, as well as the maximum desired frequency, which should not 1107be exceeded by a CPU. 1108 1109WARNING: cgroup2 cpu controller doesn't yet support the (bandwidth) control of 1110realtime processes. For a kernel built with the CONFIG_RT_GROUP_SCHED option 1111enabled for group scheduling of realtime processes, the cpu controller can only 1112be enabled when all RT processes are in the root cgroup. Be aware that system 1113management software may already have placed RT processes into non-root cgroups 1114during the system boot process, and these processes may need to be moved to the 1115root cgroup before the cpu controller can be enabled with a 1116CONFIG_RT_GROUP_SCHED enabled kernel. 1117 1118With CONFIG_RT_GROUP_SCHED disabled, this limitation does not apply and some of 1119the interface files either affect realtime processes or account for them. See 1120the following section for details. Only the cpu controller is affected by 1121CONFIG_RT_GROUP_SCHED. Other controllers can be used for the resource control of 1122realtime processes irrespective of CONFIG_RT_GROUP_SCHED. 1123 1124 1125CPU Interface Files 1126~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1127 1128The interaction of a process with the cpu controller depends on its scheduling 1129policy and the underlying scheduler. From the point of view of the cpu controller, 1130processes can be categorized as follows: 1131 1132* Processes under the fair-class scheduler 1133* Processes under a BPF scheduler with the corresponding ``cgroup_set_*`` callback 1134* Everything else: ``SCHED_{FIFO,RR,DEADLINE}`` and processes under a BPF scheduler 1135 without the corresponding ``cgroup_set_*`` callback 1136 1137For details on when a process is under the fair-class scheduler or a BPF scheduler, 1138check out :ref:`Documentation/scheduler/sched-ext.rst <sched-ext>`. 1139 1140For each of the following interface files, the above categories 1141will be referred to. All time durations are in microseconds. 1142 1143 cpu.stat 1144 A read-only flat-keyed file. 1145 This file exists whether the controller is enabled or not. 1146 1147 It always reports the following three stats, which account for all the 1148 processes in the cgroup (including those in descendant cgroups): 1149 1150 - usage_usec 1151 - user_usec 1152 - system_usec 1153 1154 and the following five when the controller is enabled, which account for 1155 only the processes under the fair-class scheduler: 1156 1157 - nr_periods 1158 - nr_throttled 1159 - throttled_usec 1160 - nr_bursts 1161 - burst_usec 1162 1163 Note that the above five CFS bandwidth stats are non-hierarchical; 1164 they only account for throttling caused by this cgroup's own bandwidth 1165 limit, not including throttling inherited from ancestor cgroups. 1166 1167 cpu.stat.local 1168 A read-only flat-keyed file. 1169 This file exists whether the controller is enabled or not. 1170 1171 It reports the following stat when the controller is enabled: 1172 1173 - throttled_usec 1174 1175 Unlike the ``throttled_usec`` reported by ``cpu.stat`` which 1176 accounts for throttling caused by this cgroup's own CFS 1177 bandwidth limit, ``cpu.stat.local`` reports the actual 1178 throttling time incurred by this cgroup's own runqueues, 1179 which may include throttling inherited from ancestor 1180 cgroup bandwidth limits. 1181 1182 When the controller is not enabled, this stat is not reported. 1183 1184 cpu.weight 1185 A read-write single value file which exists on non-root 1186 cgroups. The default is "100". 1187 1188 For non idle groups (cpu.idle = 0), the weight is in the 1189 range [1, 10000]. 1190 1191 If the cgroup has been configured to be SCHED_IDLE (cpu.idle = 1), 1192 then the weight will show as a 0. 1193 1194 This file affects only processes under the fair-class scheduler and a BPF 1195 scheduler with the ``cgroup_set_weight`` callback depending on what the 1196 callback actually does. 1197 1198 cpu.weight.nice 1199 A read-write single value file which exists on non-root 1200 cgroups. The default is "0". 1201 1202 The nice value is in the range [-20, 19]. 1203 1204 This interface file is an alternative interface for 1205 "cpu.weight" and allows reading and setting weight using the 1206 same values used by nice(2). Because the range is smaller and 1207 granularity is coarser for the nice values, the read value is 1208 the closest approximation of the current weight. 1209 1210 This file affects only processes under the fair-class scheduler and a BPF 1211 scheduler with the ``cgroup_set_weight`` callback depending on what the 1212 callback actually does. 1213 1214 cpu.max 1215 A read-write two value file which exists on non-root cgroups. 1216 The default is "max 100000". 1217 1218 The maximum bandwidth limit. It's in the following format:: 1219 1220 $MAX $PERIOD 1221 1222 which indicates that the group may consume up to $MAX in each 1223 $PERIOD duration. "max" for $MAX indicates no limit. If only 1224 one number is written, $MAX is updated. 1225 1226 This file affects only processes under the fair-class scheduler and a BPF 1227 scheduler with the ``cgroup_set_bandwidth`` callback depending on what 1228 the callback actually does. 1229 1230 cpu.max.burst 1231 A read-write single value file which exists on non-root 1232 cgroups. The default is "0". 1233 1234 The burst in the range [0, $MAX]. 1235 1236 This file affects only processes under the fair-class scheduler and a BPF 1237 scheduler with the ``cgroup_set_bandwidth`` callback depending on what 1238 the callback actually does. 1239 1240 cpu.pressure 1241 A read-write nested-keyed file. 1242 1243 Shows pressure stall information for CPU. See 1244 :ref:`Documentation/accounting/psi.rst <psi>` for details. 1245 1246 This file accounts for all the processes in the cgroup. 1247 1248 cpu.uclamp.min 1249 A read-write single value file which exists on non-root cgroups. 1250 The default is "0", i.e. no utilization boosting. 1251 1252 The requested minimum utilization (protection) as a percentage 1253 rational number, e.g. 12.34 for 12.34%. 1254 1255 This interface allows reading and setting minimum utilization clamp 1256 values similar to the sched_setattr(2). This minimum utilization 1257 value is used to clamp the task specific minimum utilization clamp, 1258 including those of realtime processes. 1259 1260 The requested minimum utilization (protection) is always capped by 1261 the current value for the maximum utilization (limit), i.e. 1262 `cpu.uclamp.max`. 1263 1264 This file affects all the processes in the cgroup. 1265 1266 cpu.uclamp.max 1267 A read-write single value file which exists on non-root cgroups. 1268 The default is "max". i.e. no utilization capping 1269 1270 The requested maximum utilization (limit) as a percentage rational 1271 number, e.g. 98.76 for 98.76%. 1272 1273 This interface allows reading and setting maximum utilization clamp 1274 values similar to the sched_setattr(2). This maximum utilization 1275 value is used to clamp the task specific maximum utilization clamp, 1276 including those of realtime processes. 1277 1278 This file affects all the processes in the cgroup. 1279 1280 cpu.idle 1281 A read-write single value file which exists on non-root cgroups. 1282 The default is 0. 1283 1284 This is the cgroup analog of the per-task SCHED_IDLE sched policy. 1285 Setting this value to a 1 will make the scheduling policy of the 1286 cgroup SCHED_IDLE. The threads inside the cgroup will retain their 1287 own relative priorities, but the cgroup itself will be treated as 1288 very low priority relative to its peers. 1289 1290 This file affects only processes under the fair-class scheduler and a BPF 1291 scheduler with the ``cgroup_set_idle`` callback depending on what the 1292 callback actually does. 1293 1294Memory 1295------ 1296 1297The "memory" controller regulates distribution of memory. Memory is 1298stateful and implements both limit and protection models. Due to the 1299intertwining between memory usage and reclaim pressure and the 1300stateful nature of memory, the distribution model is relatively 1301complex. 1302 1303While not completely water-tight, all major memory usages by a given 1304cgroup are tracked so that the total memory consumption can be 1305accounted and controlled to a reasonable extent. Currently, the 1306following types of memory usages are tracked. 1307 1308- Userland memory - page cache and anonymous memory. 1309 1310- Kernel data structures such as dentries and inodes. 1311 1312- TCP socket buffers. 1313 1314The above list may expand in the future for better coverage. 1315 1316 1317Memory Interface Files 1318~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1319 1320All memory amounts are in bytes. If a value which is not aligned to 1321PAGE_SIZE is written, the value may be rounded up to the closest 1322PAGE_SIZE multiple when read back. 1323 1324 memory.current 1325 A read-only single value file which exists on non-root 1326 cgroups. 1327 1328 The total amount of memory currently being used by the cgroup 1329 and its descendants. 1330 1331 memory.min 1332 A read-write single value file which exists on non-root 1333 cgroups. The default is "0". 1334 1335 Hard memory protection. If the memory usage of a cgroup 1336 is within its effective min boundary, the cgroup's memory 1337 won't be reclaimed under any conditions. If there is no 1338 unprotected reclaimable memory available, OOM killer 1339 is invoked. Above the effective min boundary (or 1340 effective low boundary if it is higher), pages are reclaimed 1341 proportionally to the overage, reducing reclaim pressure for 1342 smaller overages. 1343 1344 Effective min boundary is limited by memory.min values of 1345 ancestor cgroups. If there is memory.min overcommitment 1346 (child cgroup or cgroups are requiring more protected memory 1347 than parent will allow), then each child cgroup will get 1348 the part of parent's protection proportional to its 1349 actual memory usage below memory.min. 1350 1351 Putting more memory than generally available under this 1352 protection is discouraged and may lead to constant OOMs. 1353 1354 memory.low 1355 A read-write single value file which exists on non-root 1356 cgroups. The default is "0". 1357 1358 Best-effort memory protection. If the memory usage of a 1359 cgroup is within its effective low boundary, the cgroup's 1360 memory won't be reclaimed unless there is no reclaimable 1361 memory available in unprotected cgroups. 1362 Above the effective low boundary (or 1363 effective min boundary if it is higher), pages are reclaimed 1364 proportionally to the overage, reducing reclaim pressure for 1365 smaller overages. 1366 1367 Effective low boundary is limited by memory.low values of 1368 ancestor cgroups. If there is memory.low overcommitment 1369 (child cgroup or cgroups are requiring more protected memory 1370 than parent will allow), then each child cgroup will get 1371 the part of parent's protection proportional to its 1372 actual memory usage below memory.low. 1373 1374 Putting more memory than generally available under this 1375 protection is discouraged. 1376 1377 memory.high 1378 A read-write single value file which exists on non-root 1379 cgroups. The default is "max". 1380 1381 Memory usage throttle limit. If a cgroup's usage goes 1382 over the high boundary, the processes of the cgroup are 1383 throttled and put under heavy reclaim pressure. 1384 1385 Going over the high limit never invokes the OOM killer and 1386 under extreme conditions the limit may be breached. The high 1387 limit should be used in scenarios where an external process 1388 monitors the limited cgroup to alleviate heavy reclaim 1389 pressure. 1390 1391 If memory.high is opened with O_NONBLOCK then the synchronous 1392 reclaim is bypassed. This is useful for admin processes that 1393 need to dynamically adjust the job's memory limits without 1394 expending their own CPU resources on memory reclamation. The 1395 job will trigger the reclaim and/or get throttled on its 1396 next charge request. 1397 1398 Please note that with O_NONBLOCK, there is a chance that the 1399 target memory cgroup may take indefinite amount of time to 1400 reduce usage below the limit due to delayed charge request or 1401 busy-hitting its memory to slow down reclaim. 1402 1403 memory.max 1404 A read-write single value file which exists on non-root 1405 cgroups. The default is "max". 1406 1407 Memory usage hard limit. This is the main mechanism to limit 1408 memory usage of a cgroup. If a cgroup's memory usage reaches 1409 this limit and can't be reduced, the OOM killer is invoked in 1410 the cgroup. Under certain circumstances, the usage may go 1411 over the limit temporarily. 1412 1413 In default configuration regular 0-order allocations always 1414 succeed unless OOM killer chooses current task as a victim. 1415 1416 Some kinds of allocations don't invoke the OOM killer. 1417 Caller could retry them differently, return into userspace 1418 as -ENOMEM or silently ignore in cases like disk readahead. 1419 1420 If memory.max is opened with O_NONBLOCK, then the synchronous 1421 reclaim and oom-kill are bypassed. This is useful for admin 1422 processes that need to dynamically adjust the job's memory limits 1423 without expending their own CPU resources on memory reclamation. 1424 The job will trigger the reclaim and/or oom-kill on its next 1425 charge request. 1426 1427 Please note that with O_NONBLOCK, there is a chance that the 1428 target memory cgroup may take indefinite amount of time to 1429 reduce usage below the limit due to delayed charge request or 1430 busy-hitting its memory to slow down reclaim. 1431 1432 memory.reclaim 1433 A write-only nested-keyed file which exists for all cgroups. 1434 1435 This is a simple interface to trigger memory reclaim in the 1436 target cgroup. 1437 1438 Example:: 1439 1440 echo "1G" > memory.reclaim 1441 1442 Please note that the kernel can over or under reclaim from 1443 the target cgroup. If less bytes are reclaimed than the 1444 specified amount, -EAGAIN is returned. 1445 1446 Please note that the proactive reclaim (triggered by this 1447 interface) is not meant to indicate memory pressure on the 1448 memory cgroup. Therefore socket memory balancing triggered by 1449 the memory reclaim normally is not exercised in this case. 1450 This means that the networking layer will not adapt based on 1451 reclaim induced by memory.reclaim. 1452 1453The following nested keys are defined. 1454 1455 ========== ================================ 1456 swappiness Swappiness value to reclaim with 1457 ========== ================================ 1458 1459 Specifying a swappiness value instructs the kernel to perform 1460 the reclaim with that swappiness value. Note that this has the 1461 same semantics as vm.swappiness applied to memcg reclaim with 1462 all the existing limitations and potential future extensions. 1463 1464 The valid range for swappiness is [0-200, max], setting 1465 swappiness=max exclusively reclaims anonymous memory. 1466 1467 memory.peak 1468 A read-write single value file which exists on non-root cgroups. 1469 1470 The max memory usage recorded for the cgroup and its descendants since 1471 either the creation of the cgroup or the most recent reset for that FD. 1472 1473 A write of any non-empty string to this file resets it to the 1474 current memory usage for subsequent reads through the same 1475 file descriptor. 1476 1477 memory.oom.group 1478 A read-write single value file which exists on non-root 1479 cgroups. The default value is "0". 1480 1481 Determines whether the cgroup should be treated as 1482 an indivisible workload by the OOM killer. If set, 1483 all tasks belonging to the cgroup or to its descendants 1484 (if the memory cgroup is not a leaf cgroup) are killed 1485 together or not at all. This can be used to avoid 1486 partial kills to guarantee workload integrity. 1487 1488 Tasks with the OOM protection (oom_score_adj set to -1000) 1489 are treated as an exception and are never killed. 1490 1491 If the OOM killer is invoked in a cgroup, it's not going 1492 to kill any tasks outside of this cgroup, regardless 1493 memory.oom.group values of ancestor cgroups. 1494 1495 memory.events 1496 A read-only flat-keyed file which exists on non-root cgroups. 1497 The following entries are defined. Unless specified 1498 otherwise, a value change in this file generates a file 1499 modified event. 1500 1501 Note that all fields in this file are hierarchical and the 1502 file modified event can be generated due to an event down the 1503 hierarchy. For the local events at the cgroup level see 1504 memory.events.local. 1505 1506 low 1507 The number of times the cgroup is reclaimed due to 1508 high memory pressure even though its usage is under 1509 the low boundary. This usually indicates that the low 1510 boundary is over-committed. 1511 1512 high 1513 The number of times processes of the cgroup are 1514 throttled and routed to perform direct memory reclaim 1515 because the high memory boundary was exceeded. For a 1516 cgroup whose memory usage is capped by the high limit 1517 rather than global memory pressure, this event's 1518 occurrences are expected. 1519 1520 max 1521 The number of times the cgroup's memory usage was 1522 about to go over the max boundary. If direct reclaim 1523 fails to bring it down, the cgroup goes to OOM state. 1524 1525 oom 1526 The number of time the cgroup's memory usage was 1527 reached the limit and allocation was about to fail. 1528 1529 This event is not raised if the OOM killer is not 1530 considered as an option, e.g. for failed high-order 1531 allocations or if caller asked to not retry attempts. 1532 1533 oom_kill 1534 The number of processes belonging to this cgroup 1535 killed by any kind of OOM killer. 1536 1537 oom_group_kill 1538 The number of times a group OOM has occurred. 1539 1540 sock_throttled 1541 The number of times network sockets associated with 1542 this cgroup are throttled. 1543 1544 memory.events.local 1545 Similar to memory.events but the fields in the file are local 1546 to the cgroup i.e. not hierarchical. The file modified event 1547 generated on this file reflects only the local events. 1548 1549 memory.stat 1550 A read-only flat-keyed file which exists on non-root cgroups. 1551 1552 This breaks down the cgroup's memory footprint into different 1553 types of memory, type-specific details, and other information 1554 on the state and past events of the memory management system. 1555 1556 All memory amounts are in bytes. 1557 1558 The entries are ordered to be human readable, and new entries 1559 can show up in the middle. Don't rely on items remaining in a 1560 fixed position; use the keys to look up specific values! 1561 1562 If the entry has no per-node counter (or not show in the 1563 memory.numa_stat). We use 'npn' (non-per-node) as the tag 1564 to indicate that it will not show in the memory.numa_stat. 1565 1566 anon 1567 Amount of memory used in anonymous mappings such as 1568 brk(), sbrk(), and mmap(MAP_ANONYMOUS). Note that 1569 some kernel configurations might account complete larger 1570 allocations (e.g., THP) if only some, but not all the 1571 memory of such an allocation is mapped anymore. 1572 1573 file 1574 Amount of memory used to cache filesystem data, 1575 including tmpfs and shared memory. 1576 1577 kernel (npn) 1578 Amount of total kernel memory, including 1579 (kernel_stack, pagetables, percpu, vmalloc, slab) in 1580 addition to other kernel memory use cases. 1581 1582 kernel_stack 1583 Amount of memory allocated to kernel stacks. 1584 1585 pagetables 1586 Amount of memory allocated for page tables. 1587 1588 sec_pagetables 1589 Amount of memory allocated for secondary page tables, 1590 this currently includes KVM mmu allocations on x86 1591 and arm64 and IOMMU page tables. 1592 1593 percpu (npn) 1594 Amount of memory used for storing per-cpu kernel 1595 data structures. 1596 1597 sock (npn) 1598 Amount of memory used in network transmission buffers 1599 1600 vmalloc 1601 Amount of memory used for vmap backed memory. 1602 1603 shmem 1604 Amount of cached filesystem data that is swap-backed, 1605 such as tmpfs, shm segments, shared anonymous mmap()s 1606 1607 zswap 1608 Amount of memory consumed by the zswap compression backend. 1609 1610 zswapped 1611 Amount of application memory swapped out to zswap. 1612 1613 file_mapped 1614 Amount of cached filesystem data mapped with mmap(). Note 1615 that some kernel configurations might account complete 1616 larger allocations (e.g., THP) if only some, but not 1617 not all the memory of such an allocation is mapped. 1618 1619 file_dirty 1620 Amount of cached filesystem data that was modified but 1621 not yet written back to disk 1622 1623 file_writeback 1624 Amount of cached filesystem data that was modified and 1625 is currently being written back to disk 1626 1627 swapcached 1628 Amount of swap cached in memory. The swapcache is accounted 1629 against both memory and swap usage. 1630 1631 anon_thp 1632 Amount of memory used in anonymous mappings backed by 1633 transparent hugepages 1634 1635 file_thp 1636 Amount of cached filesystem data backed by transparent 1637 hugepages 1638 1639 shmem_thp 1640 Amount of shm, tmpfs, shared anonymous mmap()s backed by 1641 transparent hugepages 1642 1643 inactive_anon, active_anon, inactive_file, active_file, unevictable 1644 Amount of memory, swap-backed and filesystem-backed, 1645 on the internal memory management lists used by the 1646 page reclaim algorithm. 1647 1648 As these represent internal list state (eg. shmem pages are on anon 1649 memory management lists), inactive_foo + active_foo may not be equal to 1650 the value for the foo counter, since the foo counter is type-based, not 1651 list-based. 1652 1653 slab_reclaimable 1654 Part of "slab" that might be reclaimed, such as 1655 dentries and inodes. 1656 1657 slab_unreclaimable 1658 Part of "slab" that cannot be reclaimed on memory 1659 pressure. 1660 1661 slab (npn) 1662 Amount of memory used for storing in-kernel data 1663 structures. 1664 1665 workingset_refault_anon 1666 Number of refaults of previously evicted anonymous pages. 1667 1668 workingset_refault_file 1669 Number of refaults of previously evicted file pages. 1670 1671 workingset_activate_anon 1672 Number of refaulted anonymous pages that were immediately 1673 activated. 1674 1675 workingset_activate_file 1676 Number of refaulted file pages that were immediately activated. 1677 1678 workingset_restore_anon 1679 Number of restored anonymous pages which have been detected as 1680 an active workingset before they got reclaimed. 1681 1682 workingset_restore_file 1683 Number of restored file pages which have been detected as an 1684 active workingset before they got reclaimed. 1685 1686 workingset_nodereclaim 1687 Number of times a shadow node has been reclaimed 1688 1689 pswpin (npn) 1690 Number of pages swapped into memory 1691 1692 pswpout (npn) 1693 Number of pages swapped out of memory 1694 1695 pgscan (npn) 1696 Amount of scanned pages (in an inactive LRU list) 1697 1698 pgsteal (npn) 1699 Amount of reclaimed pages 1700 1701 pgscan_kswapd (npn) 1702 Amount of scanned pages by kswapd (in an inactive LRU list) 1703 1704 pgscan_direct (npn) 1705 Amount of scanned pages directly (in an inactive LRU list) 1706 1707 pgscan_khugepaged (npn) 1708 Amount of scanned pages by khugepaged (in an inactive LRU list) 1709 1710 pgscan_proactive (npn) 1711 Amount of scanned pages proactively (in an inactive LRU list) 1712 1713 pgsteal_kswapd (npn) 1714 Amount of reclaimed pages by kswapd 1715 1716 pgsteal_direct (npn) 1717 Amount of reclaimed pages directly 1718 1719 pgsteal_khugepaged (npn) 1720 Amount of reclaimed pages by khugepaged 1721 1722 pgsteal_proactive (npn) 1723 Amount of reclaimed pages proactively 1724 1725 pgfault (npn) 1726 Total number of page faults incurred 1727 1728 pgmajfault (npn) 1729 Number of major page faults incurred 1730 1731 pgrefill (npn) 1732 Amount of scanned pages (in an active LRU list) 1733 1734 pgactivate (npn) 1735 Amount of pages moved to the active LRU list 1736 1737 pgdeactivate (npn) 1738 Amount of pages moved to the inactive LRU list 1739 1740 pglazyfree (npn) 1741 Amount of pages postponed to be freed under memory pressure 1742 1743 pglazyfreed (npn) 1744 Amount of reclaimed lazyfree pages 1745 1746 swpin_zero 1747 Number of pages swapped into memory and filled with zero, where I/O 1748 was optimized out because the page content was detected to be zero 1749 during swapout. 1750 1751 swpout_zero 1752 Number of zero-filled pages swapped out with I/O skipped due to the 1753 content being detected as zero. 1754 1755 zswpin 1756 Number of pages moved in to memory from zswap. 1757 1758 zswpout 1759 Number of pages moved out of memory to zswap. 1760 1761 zswpwb 1762 Number of pages written from zswap to swap. 1763 1764 zswap_incomp 1765 Amount of memory used by incompressible pages currently stored in zswap 1766 without compression. These pages could not be compressed to 1767 a size smaller than PAGE_SIZE, so they are stored as-is. 1768 1769 thp_fault_alloc (npn) 1770 Number of transparent hugepages which were allocated to satisfy 1771 a page fault. This counter is not present when CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE 1772 is not set. 1773 1774 thp_collapse_alloc (npn) 1775 Number of transparent hugepages which were allocated to allow 1776 collapsing an existing range of pages. This counter is not 1777 present when CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE is not set. 1778 1779 thp_swpout (npn) 1780 Number of transparent hugepages which are swapout in one piece 1781 without splitting. 1782 1783 thp_swpout_fallback (npn) 1784 Number of transparent hugepages which were split before swapout. 1785 Usually because failed to allocate some continuous swap space 1786 for the huge page. 1787 1788 numa_pages_migrated (npn) 1789 Number of pages migrated by NUMA balancing. 1790 1791 numa_pte_updates (npn) 1792 Number of pages whose page table entries are modified by 1793 NUMA balancing to produce NUMA hinting faults on access. 1794 1795 numa_hint_faults (npn) 1796 Number of NUMA hinting faults. 1797 1798 pgdemote_kswapd 1799 Number of pages demoted by kswapd. 1800 1801 pgdemote_direct 1802 Number of pages demoted directly. 1803 1804 pgdemote_khugepaged 1805 Number of pages demoted by khugepaged. 1806 1807 pgdemote_proactive 1808 Number of pages demoted by proactively. 1809 1810 hugetlb 1811 Amount of memory used by hugetlb pages. This metric only shows 1812 up if hugetlb usage is accounted for in memory.current (i.e. 1813 cgroup is mounted with the memory_hugetlb_accounting option). 1814 1815 memory.numa_stat 1816 A read-only nested-keyed file which exists on non-root cgroups. 1817 1818 This breaks down the cgroup's memory footprint into different 1819 types of memory, type-specific details, and other information 1820 per node on the state of the memory management system. 1821 1822 This is useful for providing visibility into the NUMA locality 1823 information within an memcg since the pages are allowed to be 1824 allocated from any physical node. One of the use case is evaluating 1825 application performance by combining this information with the 1826 application's CPU allocation. 1827 1828 All memory amounts are in bytes. 1829 1830 The output format of memory.numa_stat is:: 1831 1832 type N0=<bytes in node 0> N1=<bytes in node 1> ... 1833 1834 The entries are ordered to be human readable, and new entries 1835 can show up in the middle. Don't rely on items remaining in a 1836 fixed position; use the keys to look up specific values! 1837 1838 The entries can refer to the memory.stat. 1839 1840 memory.swap.current 1841 A read-only single value file which exists on non-root 1842 cgroups. 1843 1844 The total amount of swap currently being used by the cgroup 1845 and its descendants. 1846 1847 memory.swap.high 1848 A read-write single value file which exists on non-root 1849 cgroups. The default is "max". 1850 1851 Swap usage throttle limit. If a cgroup's swap usage exceeds 1852 this limit, all its further allocations will be throttled to 1853 allow userspace to implement custom out-of-memory procedures. 1854 1855 This limit marks a point of no return for the cgroup. It is NOT 1856 designed to manage the amount of swapping a workload does 1857 during regular operation. Compare to memory.swap.max, which 1858 prohibits swapping past a set amount, but lets the cgroup 1859 continue unimpeded as long as other memory can be reclaimed. 1860 1861 Healthy workloads are not expected to reach this limit. 1862 1863 memory.swap.peak 1864 A read-write single value file which exists on non-root cgroups. 1865 1866 The max swap usage recorded for the cgroup and its descendants since 1867 the creation of the cgroup or the most recent reset for that FD. 1868 1869 A write of any non-empty string to this file resets it to the 1870 current memory usage for subsequent reads through the same 1871 file descriptor. 1872 1873 memory.swap.max 1874 A read-write single value file which exists on non-root 1875 cgroups. The default is "max". 1876 1877 Swap usage hard limit. If a cgroup's swap usage reaches this 1878 limit, anonymous memory of the cgroup will not be swapped out. 1879 1880 memory.swap.events 1881 A read-only flat-keyed file which exists on non-root cgroups. 1882 The following entries are defined. Unless specified 1883 otherwise, a value change in this file generates a file 1884 modified event. 1885 1886 high 1887 The number of times the cgroup's swap usage was over 1888 the high threshold. 1889 1890 max 1891 The number of times the cgroup's swap usage was about 1892 to go over the max boundary and swap allocation 1893 failed. 1894 1895 fail 1896 The number of times swap allocation failed either 1897 because of running out of swap system-wide or max 1898 limit. 1899 1900 When reduced under the current usage, the existing swap 1901 entries are reclaimed gradually and the swap usage may stay 1902 higher than the limit for an extended period of time. This 1903 reduces the impact on the workload and memory management. 1904 1905 memory.zswap.current 1906 A read-only single value file which exists on non-root 1907 cgroups. 1908 1909 The total amount of memory consumed by the zswap compression 1910 backend. 1911 1912 memory.zswap.max 1913 A read-write single value file which exists on non-root 1914 cgroups. The default is "max". 1915 1916 Zswap usage hard limit. If a cgroup's zswap pool reaches this 1917 limit, it will refuse to take any more stores before existing 1918 entries fault back in or are written out to disk. 1919 1920 memory.zswap.writeback 1921 A read-write single value file. The default value is "1". 1922 Note that this setting is hierarchical, i.e. the writeback would be 1923 implicitly disabled for child cgroups if the upper hierarchy 1924 does so. 1925 1926 When this is set to 0, all swapping attempts to swapping devices 1927 are disabled. This included both zswap writebacks, and swapping due 1928 to zswap store failures. If the zswap store failures are recurring 1929 (for e.g if the pages are incompressible), users can observe 1930 reclaim inefficiency after disabling writeback (because the same 1931 pages might be rejected again and again). 1932 1933 Note that this is subtly different from setting memory.swap.max to 1934 0, as it still allows for pages to be written to the zswap pool. 1935 This setting has no effect if zswap is disabled, and swapping 1936 is allowed unless memory.swap.max is set to 0. 1937 1938 memory.pressure 1939 A read-write nested-keyed file. 1940 1941 Shows pressure stall information for memory. See 1942 :ref:`Documentation/accounting/psi.rst <psi>` for details. 1943 1944 1945Usage Guidelines 1946~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1947 1948"memory.high" is the main mechanism to control memory usage. 1949Over-committing on high limit (sum of high limits > available memory) 1950and letting global memory pressure to distribute memory according to 1951usage is a viable strategy. 1952 1953Because breach of the high limit doesn't trigger the OOM killer but 1954throttles the offending cgroup, a management agent has ample 1955opportunities to monitor and take appropriate actions such as granting 1956more memory or terminating the workload. 1957 1958Determining whether a cgroup has enough memory is not trivial as 1959memory usage doesn't indicate whether the workload can benefit from 1960more memory. For example, a workload which writes data received from 1961network to a file can use all available memory but can also operate as 1962performant with a small amount of memory. A measure of memory 1963pressure - how much the workload is being impacted due to lack of 1964memory - is necessary to determine whether a workload needs more 1965memory; unfortunately, memory pressure monitoring mechanism isn't 1966implemented yet. 1967 1968Reclaim Protection 1969~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1970 1971The protection configured with "memory.low" or "memory.min" applies relatively 1972to the target of the reclaim (i.e. any of memory cgroup limits, proactive 1973memory.reclaim or global reclaim apparently located in the root cgroup). 1974The protection value configured for B applies unchanged to the reclaim 1975targeting A (i.e. caused by competition with the sibling E):: 1976 1977 root - ... - A - B - C 1978 \ ` D 1979 ` E 1980 1981When the reclaim targets ancestors of A, the effective protection of B is 1982capped by the protection value configured for A (and any other intermediate 1983ancestors between A and the target). 1984 1985To express indifference about relative sibling protection, it is suggested to 1986use memory_recursiveprot. Configuring all descendants of a parent with finite 1987protection to "max" works but it may unnecessarily skew memory.events:low 1988field. 1989 1990Memory Ownership 1991~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1992 1993A memory area is charged to the cgroup which instantiated it and stays 1994charged to the cgroup until the area is released. Migrating a process 1995to a different cgroup doesn't move the memory usages that it 1996instantiated while in the previous cgroup to the new cgroup. 1997 1998A memory area may be used by processes belonging to different cgroups. 1999To which cgroup the area will be charged is in-deterministic; however, 2000over time, the memory area is likely to end up in a cgroup which has 2001enough memory allowance to avoid high reclaim pressure. 2002 2003If a cgroup sweeps a considerable amount of memory which is expected 2004to be accessed repeatedly by other cgroups, it may make sense to use 2005POSIX_FADV_DONTNEED to relinquish the ownership of memory areas 2006belonging to the affected files to ensure correct memory ownership. 2007 2008 2009IO 2010-- 2011 2012The "io" controller regulates the distribution of IO resources. This 2013controller implements both weight based and absolute bandwidth or IOPS 2014limit distribution. Absolute BPS and IOPS limits are enforced by 2015blk-throttle and apply to all devices, while weight based proportional 2016distribution is provided by the iocost cost model controller 2017(CONFIG_BLK_CGROUP_IOCOST) and, when the BFQ I/O scheduler is in use 2018for a device, by BFQ's own cgroup support. Latency-based protection 2019(CONFIG_BLK_CGROUP_IOLATENCY) and I/O priority assignment 2020(CONFIG_BLK_CGROUP_IOPRIO) are also available. 2021 2022 2023IO Interface Files 2024~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 2025 2026 io.stat 2027 A read-only nested-keyed file. 2028 2029 Lines are keyed by $MAJ:$MIN device numbers and not ordered. 2030 The following nested keys are defined. 2031 2032 ====== ===================== 2033 rbytes Bytes read 2034 wbytes Bytes written 2035 rios Number of read IOs 2036 wios Number of write IOs 2037 dbytes Bytes discarded 2038 dios Number of discard IOs 2039 ====== ===================== 2040 2041 An example read output follows:: 2042 2043 8:16 rbytes=1459200 wbytes=314773504 rios=192 wios=353 dbytes=0 dios=0 2044 8:0 rbytes=90430464 wbytes=299008000 rios=8950 wios=1252 dbytes=50331648 dios=3021 2045 2046 io.cost.qos 2047 A read-write nested-keyed file which exists only on the root 2048 cgroup. 2049 2050 This file configures the Quality of Service of the IO cost 2051 model based controller (CONFIG_BLK_CGROUP_IOCOST) which 2052 currently implements "io.weight" proportional control. Lines 2053 are keyed by $MAJ:$MIN device numbers and not ordered. The 2054 line for a given device is populated on the first write for 2055 the device on "io.cost.qos" or "io.cost.model". The following 2056 nested keys are defined. 2057 2058 ====== ===================================== 2059 enable Weight-based control enable 2060 ctrl "auto" or "user" 2061 rpct Read latency percentile [0, 100] 2062 rlat Read latency threshold 2063 wpct Write latency percentile [0, 100] 2064 wlat Write latency threshold 2065 min Minimum scaling percentage [1, 10000] 2066 max Maximum scaling percentage [1, 10000] 2067 ====== ===================================== 2068 2069 The controller is disabled by default and can be enabled by 2070 setting "enable" to 1. "rpct" and "wpct" parameters default 2071 to zero and the controller uses internal device saturation 2072 state to adjust the overall IO rate between "min" and "max". 2073 2074 When a better control quality is needed, latency QoS 2075 parameters can be configured. For example:: 2076 2077 8:16 enable=1 ctrl=auto rpct=95.00 rlat=75000 wpct=95.00 wlat=150000 min=50.00 max=150.0 2078 2079 shows that on sdb, the controller is enabled, will consider 2080 the device saturated if the 95th percentile of read completion 2081 latencies is above 75ms or write 150ms, and adjust the overall 2082 IO issue rate between 50% and 150% accordingly. 2083 2084 The lower the saturation point, the better the latency QoS at 2085 the cost of aggregate bandwidth. The narrower the allowed 2086 adjustment range between "min" and "max", the more conformant 2087 to the cost model the IO behavior. Note that the IO issue 2088 base rate may be far off from 100% and setting "min" and "max" 2089 blindly can lead to a significant loss of device capacity or 2090 control quality. "min" and "max" are useful for regulating 2091 devices which show wide temporary behavior changes - e.g. a 2092 ssd which accepts writes at the line speed for a while and 2093 then completely stalls for multiple seconds. 2094 2095 When "ctrl" is "auto", the parameters are controlled by the 2096 kernel and may change automatically. Setting "ctrl" to "user" 2097 or setting any of the percentile and latency parameters puts 2098 it into "user" mode and disables the automatic changes. The 2099 automatic mode can be restored by setting "ctrl" to "auto". 2100 2101 io.cost.model 2102 A read-write nested-keyed file which exists only on the root 2103 cgroup. 2104 2105 This file configures the cost model of the IO cost model based 2106 controller (CONFIG_BLK_CGROUP_IOCOST) which currently 2107 implements "io.weight" proportional control. Lines are keyed 2108 by $MAJ:$MIN device numbers and not ordered. The line for a 2109 given device is populated on the first write for the device on 2110 "io.cost.qos" or "io.cost.model". The following nested keys 2111 are defined. 2112 2113 ===== ================================ 2114 ctrl "auto" or "user" 2115 model The cost model in use - "linear" 2116 ===== ================================ 2117 2118 When "ctrl" is "auto", the kernel may change all parameters 2119 dynamically. When "ctrl" is set to "user" or any other 2120 parameters are written to, "ctrl" become "user" and the 2121 automatic changes are disabled. 2122 2123 When "model" is "linear", the following model parameters are 2124 defined. 2125 2126 ============= ======================================== 2127 [r|w]bps The maximum sequential IO throughput 2128 [r|w]seqiops The maximum 4k sequential IOs per second 2129 [r|w]randiops The maximum 4k random IOs per second 2130 ============= ======================================== 2131 2132 From the above, the builtin linear model determines the base 2133 costs of a sequential and random IO and the cost coefficient 2134 for the IO size. While simple, this model can cover most 2135 common device classes acceptably. 2136 2137 The IO cost model isn't expected to be accurate in absolute 2138 sense and is scaled to the device behavior dynamically. 2139 2140 If needed, tools/cgroup/iocost_coef_gen.py can be used to 2141 generate device-specific coefficients. 2142 2143 io.weight 2144 A read-write flat-keyed file which exists on non-root cgroups. 2145 The default is "default 100". 2146 2147 The first line is the default weight applied to devices 2148 without specific override. The rest are overrides keyed by 2149 $MAJ:$MIN device numbers and not ordered. The weights are in 2150 the range [1, 10000] and specifies the relative amount IO time 2151 the cgroup can use in relation to its siblings. 2152 2153 The default weight can be updated by writing either "default 2154 $WEIGHT" or simply "$WEIGHT". Overrides can be set by writing 2155 "$MAJ:$MIN $WEIGHT" and unset by writing "$MAJ:$MIN default". 2156 2157 An example read output follows:: 2158 2159 default 100 2160 8:16 200 2161 8:0 50 2162 2163 io.max 2164 A read-write nested-keyed file which exists on non-root 2165 cgroups. 2166 2167 BPS and IOPS based IO limit. Lines are keyed by $MAJ:$MIN 2168 device numbers and not ordered. The following nested keys are 2169 defined. 2170 2171 ===== ================================== 2172 rbps Max read bytes per second 2173 wbps Max write bytes per second 2174 riops Max read IO operations per second 2175 wiops Max write IO operations per second 2176 ===== ================================== 2177 2178 When writing, any number of nested key-value pairs can be 2179 specified in any order. "max" can be specified as the value 2180 to remove a specific limit. If the same key is specified 2181 multiple times, the outcome is undefined. 2182 2183 BPS and IOPS are measured in each IO direction and IOs are 2184 delayed if limit is reached. Temporary bursts are allowed. 2185 2186 Setting read limit at 2M BPS and write at 120 IOPS for 8:16:: 2187 2188 echo "8:16 rbps=2097152 wiops=120" > io.max 2189 2190 Reading returns the following:: 2191 2192 8:16 rbps=2097152 wbps=max riops=max wiops=120 2193 2194 Write IOPS limit can be removed by writing the following:: 2195 2196 echo "8:16 wiops=max" > io.max 2197 2198 Reading now returns the following:: 2199 2200 8:16 rbps=2097152 wbps=max riops=max wiops=max 2201 2202 io.pressure 2203 A read-write nested-keyed file. 2204 2205 Shows pressure stall information for IO. See 2206 :ref:`Documentation/accounting/psi.rst <psi>` for details. 2207 2208 2209Writeback 2210~~~~~~~~~ 2211 2212Page cache is dirtied through buffered writes and shared mmaps and 2213written asynchronously to the backing filesystem by the writeback 2214mechanism. Writeback sits between the memory and IO domains and 2215regulates the proportion of dirty memory by balancing dirtying and 2216write IOs. 2217 2218The io controller, in conjunction with the memory controller, 2219implements control of page cache writeback IOs. The memory controller 2220defines the memory domain that dirty memory ratio is calculated and 2221maintained for and the io controller defines the io domain which 2222writes out dirty pages for the memory domain. Both system-wide and 2223per-cgroup dirty memory states are examined and the more restrictive 2224of the two is enforced. 2225 2226cgroup writeback requires explicit support from the underlying 2227filesystem. Currently, cgroup writeback is implemented on ext2, ext4, 2228btrfs, f2fs, and xfs. On other filesystems, all writeback IOs are 2229attributed to the root cgroup. 2230 2231There are inherent differences in memory and writeback management 2232which affects how cgroup ownership is tracked. Memory is tracked per 2233page while writeback per inode. For the purpose of writeback, an 2234inode is assigned to a cgroup and all IO requests to write dirty pages 2235from the inode are attributed to that cgroup. 2236 2237As cgroup ownership for memory is tracked per page, there can be pages 2238which are associated with different cgroups than the one the inode is 2239associated with. These are called foreign pages. The writeback 2240constantly keeps track of foreign pages and, if a particular foreign 2241cgroup becomes the majority over a certain period of time, switches 2242the ownership of the inode to that cgroup. 2243 2244While this model is enough for most use cases where a given inode is 2245mostly dirtied by a single cgroup even when the main writing cgroup 2246changes over time, use cases where multiple cgroups write to a single 2247inode simultaneously are not supported well. In such circumstances, a 2248significant portion of IOs are likely to be attributed incorrectly. 2249As memory controller assigns page ownership on the first use and 2250doesn't update it until the page is released, even if writeback 2251strictly follows page ownership, multiple cgroups dirtying overlapping 2252areas wouldn't work as expected. It's recommended to avoid such usage 2253patterns. 2254 2255The sysctl knobs which affect writeback behavior are applied to cgroup 2256writeback as follows. 2257 2258 vm.dirty_background_ratio, vm.dirty_ratio 2259 These ratios apply the same to cgroup writeback with the 2260 amount of available memory capped by limits imposed by the 2261 memory controller and system-wide clean memory. 2262 2263 vm.dirty_background_bytes, vm.dirty_bytes 2264 For cgroup writeback, this is calculated into ratio against 2265 total available memory and applied the same way as 2266 vm.dirty[_background]_ratio. 2267 2268 2269IO Latency 2270~~~~~~~~~~ 2271 2272This is a cgroup v2 controller for IO workload protection. You provide a group 2273with a latency target, and if the group misses its target the controller will 2274throttle any peers that have a lower latency target than the protected 2275workload. How a miss is detected depends on the device: on rotational devices 2276the average latency over the window must exceed the target, while on 2277non-rotational devices a miss is counted once enough of the IOs in the window 2278individually exceed the target. 2279 2280The limits are only applied at the peer level in the hierarchy. This means that 2281in the diagram below, only groups A, B, and C will influence each other, and 2282groups D and F will influence each other. Group G will influence nobody:: 2283 2284 [root] 2285 / | \ 2286 A B C 2287 / \ | 2288 D F G 2289 2290 2291So the ideal way to configure this is to set io.latency in groups A, B, and C. 2292Generally you do not want to set a value lower than the latency your device 2293supports. Experiment to find the value that works best for your workload. 2294Start at higher than the expected latency for your device and, with 2295blkcg_debug_stats enabled, observe io.stat for your workload group to get an 2296idea of the latency you see during normal operation. On rotational devices, 2297use the avg_lat value as a basis for your real setting, setting it 10-15% 2298higher. On non-rotational devices io.stat reports no average latency; set 2299the target based on your device and use the missed/total fields to verify it 2300is being met. 2301 2302How IO Latency Throttling Works 2303~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 2304 2305io.latency is work conserving; so as long as everybody is meeting their latency 2306target the controller doesn't do anything. Once a group starts missing its 2307target it begins throttling any peer group that has a higher target than itself. 2308This throttling takes 2 forms: 2309 2310- Queue depth throttling. This is the number of outstanding IO's a group is 2311 allowed to have. We will clamp down relatively quickly, starting at no limit 2312 and going all the way down to 1 IO at a time. 2313 2314- Artificial delay induction. There are certain types of IO that cannot be 2315 throttled without possibly adversely affecting higher priority groups. This 2316 includes swapping and metadata IO. These types of IO are allowed to occur 2317 normally, however they are "charged" to the originating group. If the 2318 originating group is being throttled you will see the use_delay and delay_nsec 2319 fields in io.stat increase. The delay_nsec value is how many nanoseconds that 2320 are being added to any process that runs in this group. Because this number can 2321 grow quite large if there is a lot of swapping or metadata IO occurring we 2322 limit the individual delay events to 1 second at a time. 2323 2324Once the victimized group starts meeting its latency target again it will start 2325unthrottling any peer groups that were throttled previously. If the victimized 2326group simply stops doing IO the global counter will unthrottle appropriately. 2327 2328IO Latency Interface Files 2329~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 2330 2331 io.latency 2332 This takes a similar format as the other controllers. 2333 2334 "MAJOR:MINOR target=<target time in microseconds>" 2335 2336 io.stat 2337 If the controller is enabled you will see extra stats in io.stat in 2338 addition to the normal ones. These debug stats are only emitted when 2339 the blkcg_debug_stats module parameter is enabled (it is disabled by 2340 default). 2341 2342 The reported latency fields depend on the device. Rotational devices 2343 report avg_lat and win; non-rotational devices report missed and total 2344 instead. missed and total are live counters for the current window and 2345 may change between reads. 2346 2347 depth 2348 This is the current queue depth for the group. 2349 2350 avg_lat 2351 (Rotational devices only.) This is an exponential moving 2352 average with a decay rate of 1/exp bound by the sampling 2353 interval. The decay rate interval can be calculated by 2354 multiplying the win value in io.stat by the corresponding number 2355 of samples based on the win value. 2356 2357 win 2358 (Rotational devices only.) The sampling window size in 2359 milliseconds. This is the minimum duration of time between 2360 evaluation events. Windows only elapse with IO activity. Idle 2361 periods extend the most recent window. 2362 2363 missed 2364 (Non-rotational devices only.) The number of IOs in the 2365 current window whose latency exceeded the target. A group is 2366 considered to be missing its target once missed reaches a 2367 certain ratio of total. 2368 2369 total 2370 (Non-rotational devices only.) The total number of IOs 2371 accounted in the current window. 2372 2373IO Priority 2374~~~~~~~~~~~ 2375 2376A single attribute controls the behavior of the I/O priority cgroup policy, 2377namely the io.prio.class attribute. The following values are accepted for 2378that attribute: 2379 2380 no-change 2381 Do not modify the I/O priority class. 2382 2383 promote-to-rt 2384 For requests that have a non-RT I/O priority class, change it into RT. 2385 Also change the priority level of these requests to 4. Do not modify 2386 the I/O priority of requests that have priority class RT. 2387 2388 restrict-to-be 2389 For requests that do not have an I/O priority class or that have I/O 2390 priority class RT, change it into BE. Also change the priority level 2391 of these requests to 0. Do not modify the I/O priority class of 2392 requests that have priority class IDLE. 2393 2394 idle 2395 Change the I/O priority class of all requests into IDLE, the lowest 2396 I/O priority class. 2397 2398 none-to-rt 2399 Deprecated. Just an alias for promote-to-rt. 2400 2401The following numerical values are associated with the I/O priority policies: 2402 2403+----------------+---+ 2404| no-change | 0 | 2405+----------------+---+ 2406| promote-to-rt | 1 | 2407+----------------+---+ 2408| restrict-to-be | 2 | 2409+----------------+---+ 2410| idle | 3 | 2411+----------------+---+ 2412 2413The numerical value that corresponds to each I/O priority class is as follows: 2414 2415+-------------------------------+---+ 2416| IOPRIO_CLASS_NONE | 0 | 2417+-------------------------------+---+ 2418| IOPRIO_CLASS_RT (real-time) | 1 | 2419+-------------------------------+---+ 2420| IOPRIO_CLASS_BE (best effort) | 2 | 2421+-------------------------------+---+ 2422| IOPRIO_CLASS_IDLE | 3 | 2423+-------------------------------+---+ 2424 2425The algorithm to set the I/O priority class for a request is as follows: 2426 2427- If I/O priority class policy is promote-to-rt, change the request I/O 2428 priority class to IOPRIO_CLASS_RT and change the request I/O priority 2429 level to 4. 2430- If I/O priority class policy is not promote-to-rt, translate the I/O priority 2431 class policy into a number, then change the request I/O priority class 2432 into the maximum of the I/O priority class policy number and the numerical 2433 I/O priority class. 2434 2435PID 2436--- 2437 2438The process number controller is used to allow a cgroup to stop any 2439new tasks from being fork()'d or clone()'d after a specified limit is 2440reached. 2441 2442The number of tasks in a cgroup can be exhausted in ways which other 2443controllers cannot prevent, thus warranting its own controller. For 2444example, a fork bomb is likely to exhaust the number of tasks before 2445hitting memory restrictions. 2446 2447Note that PIDs used in this controller refer to TIDs, process IDs as 2448used by the kernel. 2449 2450 2451PID Interface Files 2452~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 2453 2454 pids.max 2455 A read-write single value file which exists on non-root 2456 cgroups. The default is "max". 2457 2458 Hard limit of number of processes. 2459 2460 pids.current 2461 A read-only single value file which exists on non-root cgroups. 2462 2463 The number of processes currently in the cgroup and its 2464 descendants. 2465 2466 pids.peak 2467 A read-only single value file which exists on non-root cgroups. 2468 2469 The maximum value that the number of processes in the cgroup and its 2470 descendants has ever reached. 2471 2472 pids.events 2473 A read-only flat-keyed file which exists on non-root cgroups. Unless 2474 specified otherwise, a value change in this file generates a file 2475 modified event. The following entries are defined. 2476 2477 max 2478 The number of times the cgroup's total number of processes hit the pids.max 2479 limit (see also pids_localevents). 2480 2481 pids.events.local 2482 Similar to pids.events but the fields in the file are local 2483 to the cgroup i.e. not hierarchical. The file modified event 2484 generated on this file reflects only the local events. 2485 2486Organisational operations are not blocked by cgroup policies, so it is 2487possible to have pids.current > pids.max. This can be done by either 2488setting the limit to be smaller than pids.current, or attaching enough 2489processes to the cgroup such that pids.current is larger than 2490pids.max. However, it is not possible to violate a cgroup PID policy 2491through fork() or clone(). These will return -EAGAIN if the creation 2492of a new process would cause a cgroup policy to be violated. 2493 2494 2495Cpuset 2496------ 2497 2498The "cpuset" controller provides a mechanism for constraining 2499the CPU and memory node placement of tasks to only the resources 2500specified in the cpuset interface files in a task's current cgroup. 2501This is especially valuable on large NUMA systems where placing jobs 2502on properly sized subsets of the systems with careful processor and 2503memory placement to reduce cross-node memory access and contention 2504can improve overall system performance. 2505 2506The "cpuset" controller is hierarchical. That means the controller 2507cannot use CPUs or memory nodes not allowed in its parent. 2508 2509 2510Cpuset Interface Files 2511~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 2512 2513 cpuset.cpus 2514 A read-write multiple values file which exists on non-root 2515 cpuset-enabled cgroups. 2516 2517 It lists the requested CPUs to be used by tasks within this 2518 cgroup. The actual list of CPUs to be granted, however, is 2519 subjected to constraints imposed by its parent and can differ 2520 from the requested CPUs. 2521 2522 The CPU numbers are comma-separated numbers or ranges. 2523 For example:: 2524 2525 # cat cpuset.cpus 2526 0-4,6,8-10 2527 2528 An empty value indicates that the cgroup is using the same 2529 setting as the nearest cgroup ancestor with a non-empty 2530 "cpuset.cpus" or all the available CPUs if none is found. 2531 2532 The value of "cpuset.cpus" stays constant until the next update 2533 and won't be affected by any CPU hotplug events. 2534 2535 cpuset.cpus.effective 2536 A read-only multiple values file which exists on all 2537 cpuset-enabled cgroups. 2538 2539 It lists the onlined CPUs that are actually granted to this 2540 cgroup by its parent. These CPUs are allowed to be used by 2541 tasks within the current cgroup. 2542 2543 If "cpuset.cpus" is empty, the "cpuset.cpus.effective" file shows 2544 all the CPUs from the parent cgroup that can be available to 2545 be used by this cgroup. Otherwise, it should be a subset of 2546 "cpuset.cpus" unless none of the CPUs listed in "cpuset.cpus" 2547 can be granted. In this case, it will be treated just like an 2548 empty "cpuset.cpus". 2549 2550 Its value will be affected by CPU hotplug events. 2551 2552 cpuset.mems 2553 A read-write multiple values file which exists on non-root 2554 cpuset-enabled cgroups. 2555 2556 It lists the requested memory nodes to be used by tasks within 2557 this cgroup. The actual list of memory nodes granted, however, 2558 is subjected to constraints imposed by its parent and can differ 2559 from the requested memory nodes. 2560 2561 The memory node numbers are comma-separated numbers or ranges. 2562 For example:: 2563 2564 # cat cpuset.mems 2565 0-1,3 2566 2567 An empty value indicates that the cgroup is using the same 2568 setting as the nearest cgroup ancestor with a non-empty 2569 "cpuset.mems" or all the available memory nodes if none 2570 is found. 2571 2572 The value of "cpuset.mems" stays constant until the next update 2573 and won't be affected by any memory nodes hotplug events. 2574 2575 Setting a non-empty value to "cpuset.mems" causes memory of 2576 tasks within the cgroup to be migrated to the designated nodes if 2577 they are currently using memory outside of the designated nodes. 2578 2579 There is a cost for this memory migration. The migration 2580 may not be complete and some memory pages may be left behind. 2581 So it is recommended that "cpuset.mems" should be set properly 2582 before spawning new tasks into the cpuset. Even if there is 2583 a need to change "cpuset.mems" with active tasks, it shouldn't 2584 be done frequently. 2585 2586 For a multithreaded process, the threadgroup leader is 2587 considered the owner of the group's memory. Memory policy 2588 rebinding and migration will only happen with respect to the 2589 threadgroup leader. To avoid unexpected results, non-leading 2590 threads shouldn't be put into another cgroup whose "cpuset.mems" 2591 doesn't fully overlap that of the threadgroup leader. 2592 2593 cpuset.mems.effective 2594 A read-only multiple values file which exists on all 2595 cpuset-enabled cgroups. 2596 2597 It lists the onlined memory nodes that are actually granted to 2598 this cgroup by its parent. These memory nodes are allowed to 2599 be used by tasks within the current cgroup. 2600 2601 If "cpuset.mems" is empty, it shows all the memory nodes from the 2602 parent cgroup that will be available to be used by this cgroup. 2603 Otherwise, it should be a subset of "cpuset.mems" unless none of 2604 the memory nodes listed in "cpuset.mems" can be granted. In this 2605 case, it will be treated just like an empty "cpuset.mems". 2606 2607 Its value will be affected by memory nodes hotplug events. 2608 2609 cpuset.cpus.exclusive 2610 A read-write multiple values file which exists on non-root 2611 cpuset-enabled cgroups. 2612 2613 It lists all the exclusive CPUs that are allowed to be used 2614 to create a new cpuset partition. Its value is not used 2615 unless the cgroup becomes a valid partition root. See the 2616 "cpuset.cpus.partition" section below for a description of what 2617 a cpuset partition is. 2618 2619 When the cgroup becomes a partition root, the actual exclusive 2620 CPUs that are allocated to that partition are listed in 2621 "cpuset.cpus.exclusive.effective" which may be different 2622 from "cpuset.cpus.exclusive". If "cpuset.cpus.exclusive" 2623 has previously been set, "cpuset.cpus.exclusive.effective" 2624 is always a subset of it. 2625 2626 Users can manually set it to a value that is different from 2627 "cpuset.cpus". One constraint in setting it is that the list of 2628 CPUs must be exclusive with respect to "cpuset.cpus.exclusive" 2629 and "cpuset.cpus.exclusive.effective" of its siblings. Another 2630 constraint is that it cannot be a superset of "cpuset.cpus" 2631 of its sibling in order to leave at least one CPU available to 2632 that sibling when the exclusive CPUs are taken away. 2633 2634 For a parent cgroup, any one of its exclusive CPUs can only 2635 be distributed to at most one of its child cgroups. Having an 2636 exclusive CPU appearing in two or more of its child cgroups is 2637 not allowed (the exclusivity rule). A value that violates the 2638 exclusivity rule will be rejected with a write error. 2639 2640 The root cgroup is a partition root and all its available CPUs 2641 are in its exclusive CPU set. 2642 2643 cpuset.cpus.exclusive.effective 2644 A read-only multiple values file which exists on all non-root 2645 cpuset-enabled cgroups. 2646 2647 This file shows the effective set of exclusive CPUs that 2648 can be used to create a partition root. The content 2649 of this file will always be a subset of its parent's 2650 "cpuset.cpus.exclusive.effective" if its parent is not the root 2651 cgroup. It will also be a subset of "cpuset.cpus.exclusive" 2652 if it is set. This file should only be non-empty if either 2653 "cpuset.cpus.exclusive" is set or when the current cpuset is 2654 a valid partition root. 2655 2656 cpuset.cpus.isolated 2657 A read-only and root cgroup only multiple values file. 2658 2659 This file shows the set of all isolated CPUs used in existing 2660 isolated partitions. It will be empty if no isolated partition 2661 is created. 2662 2663 cpuset.cpus.partition 2664 A read-write single value file which exists on non-root 2665 cpuset-enabled cgroups. This flag is owned by the parent cgroup 2666 and is not delegatable. 2667 2668 It accepts only the following input values when written to. 2669 2670 ========== ===================================== 2671 "member" Non-root member of a partition 2672 "root" Partition root 2673 "isolated" Partition root without load balancing 2674 ========== ===================================== 2675 2676 A cpuset partition is a collection of cpuset-enabled cgroups with 2677 a partition root at the top of the hierarchy and its descendants 2678 except those that are separate partition roots themselves and 2679 their descendants. A partition has exclusive access to the 2680 set of exclusive CPUs allocated to it. Other cgroups outside 2681 of that partition cannot use any CPUs in that set. 2682 2683 There are two types of partitions - local and remote. A local 2684 partition is one whose parent cgroup is also a valid partition 2685 root. A remote partition is one whose parent cgroup is not a 2686 valid partition root itself. 2687 2688 Writing to "cpuset.cpus.exclusive" is optional for the creation 2689 of a local partition as its "cpuset.cpus.exclusive" file will 2690 assume an implicit value that is the same as "cpuset.cpus" if it 2691 is not set. Writing the proper "cpuset.cpus.exclusive" values 2692 down the cgroup hierarchy before the target partition root is 2693 mandatory for the creation of a remote partition. 2694 2695 Not all the CPUs requested in "cpuset.cpus.exclusive" can be 2696 used to form a new partition. Only those that were present 2697 in its parent's "cpuset.cpus.exclusive.effective" control 2698 file can be used. For partitions created without setting 2699 "cpuset.cpus.exclusive", exclusive CPUs specified in sibling's 2700 "cpuset.cpus.exclusive" or "cpuset.cpus.exclusive.effective" 2701 also cannot be used. 2702 2703 Currently, a remote partition cannot be created under a local 2704 partition. All the ancestors of a remote partition root except 2705 the root cgroup cannot be a partition root. 2706 2707 The root cgroup is always a partition root and its state cannot 2708 be changed. All other non-root cgroups start out as "member". 2709 Even though the "cpuset.cpus.exclusive*" and "cpuset.cpus" 2710 control files are not present in the root cgroup, they are 2711 implicitly the same as the "/sys/devices/system/cpu/possible" 2712 sysfs file. 2713 2714 When set to "root", the current cgroup is the root of a new 2715 partition or scheduling domain. The set of exclusive CPUs is 2716 determined by the value of its "cpuset.cpus.exclusive.effective". 2717 2718 When set to "isolated", the CPUs in that partition will be in 2719 an isolated state without any load balancing from the scheduler 2720 and excluded from the unbound workqueues. Tasks placed in such 2721 a partition with multiple CPUs should be carefully distributed 2722 and bound to each of the individual CPUs for optimal performance. 2723 2724 A partition root ("root" or "isolated") can be in one of the 2725 two possible states - valid or invalid. An invalid partition 2726 root is in a degraded state where some state information may 2727 be retained, but behaves more like a "member". 2728 2729 All possible state transitions among "member", "root" and 2730 "isolated" are allowed. 2731 2732 On read, the "cpuset.cpus.partition" file can show the following 2733 values. 2734 2735 ============================= ===================================== 2736 "member" Non-root member of a partition 2737 "root" Partition root 2738 "isolated" Partition root without load balancing 2739 "root invalid (<reason>)" Invalid partition root 2740 "isolated invalid (<reason>)" Invalid isolated partition root 2741 ============================= ===================================== 2742 2743 In the case of an invalid partition root, a descriptive string on 2744 why the partition is invalid is included within parentheses. 2745 2746 For a local partition root to be valid, the following conditions 2747 must be met. 2748 2749 1) The parent cgroup is a valid partition root. 2750 2) The "cpuset.cpus.exclusive.effective" file cannot be empty, 2751 though it may contain offline CPUs. 2752 3) The "cpuset.cpus.effective" cannot be empty unless there is 2753 no task associated with this partition. 2754 2755 For a remote partition root to be valid, all the above conditions 2756 except the first one must be met. 2757 2758 External events like hotplug or changes to "cpuset.cpus" or 2759 "cpuset.cpus.exclusive" can cause a valid partition root to 2760 become invalid and vice versa. Note that a task cannot be 2761 moved to a cgroup with empty "cpuset.cpus.effective". 2762 2763 A valid non-root parent partition may distribute out all its CPUs 2764 to its child local partitions when there is no task associated 2765 with it. 2766 2767 Care must be taken to change a valid partition root to "member" 2768 as all its child local partitions, if present, will become 2769 invalid causing disruption to tasks running in those child 2770 partitions. These inactivated partitions could be recovered if 2771 their parent is switched back to a partition root with a proper 2772 value in "cpuset.cpus" or "cpuset.cpus.exclusive". 2773 2774 Poll and inotify events are triggered whenever the state of 2775 "cpuset.cpus.partition" changes. That includes changes caused 2776 by write to "cpuset.cpus.partition", cpu hotplug or other 2777 changes that modify the validity status of the partition. 2778 This will allow user space agents to monitor unexpected changes 2779 to "cpuset.cpus.partition" without the need to do continuous 2780 polling. 2781 2782 A user can pre-configure certain CPUs to an isolated state 2783 with load balancing disabled at boot time with the "isolcpus" 2784 kernel boot command line option. If those CPUs are to be put 2785 into a partition, they have to be used in an isolated partition. 2786 2787 2788Device controller 2789----------------- 2790 2791Device controller manages access to device files. It includes both 2792creation of new device files (using mknod), and access to the 2793existing device files. 2794 2795Cgroup v2 device controller has no interface files and is implemented 2796on top of cgroup BPF. To control access to device files, a user may 2797create bpf programs of type BPF_PROG_TYPE_CGROUP_DEVICE and attach 2798them to cgroups with BPF_CGROUP_DEVICE flag. On an attempt to access a 2799device file, corresponding BPF programs will be executed, and depending 2800on the return value the attempt will succeed or fail with -EPERM. 2801 2802A BPF_PROG_TYPE_CGROUP_DEVICE program takes a pointer to the 2803bpf_cgroup_dev_ctx structure, which describes the device access attempt: 2804access type (mknod/read/write) and device (type, major and minor numbers). 2805If the program returns 0, the attempt fails with -EPERM, otherwise it 2806succeeds. 2807 2808An example of BPF_PROG_TYPE_CGROUP_DEVICE program may be found in 2809tools/testing/selftests/bpf/progs/dev_cgroup.c in the kernel source tree. 2810 2811 2812RDMA 2813---- 2814 2815The "rdma" controller regulates the distribution and accounting of 2816RDMA resources. 2817 2818RDMA devices from all network namespaces are listed. Each line starts with 2819the device name. If more than one device has the same name, ``index=N`` 2820follows the name, where ``N`` is the system-wide RDMA device index, unique 2821among registered devices. 2822 2823RDMA Interface Files 2824~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 2825 2826 rdma.max 2827 A readwrite nested-keyed file that exists for all the cgroups 2828 except root that describes current configured resource limit 2829 for a RDMA/IB device. 2830 2831 Lines are keyed by device name and are not ordered. A write may 2832 include ``index=N`` after the device name. The index is optional 2833 when the name is globally unique. If multiple devices have that 2834 name, the index is required and a write without it fails with 2835 ``-ENOTUNIQ``. 2836 Each line contains space separated resource name and its configured 2837 limit that can be distributed. 2838 2839 The following nested keys are defined. 2840 2841 ========== ============================= 2842 hca_handle Maximum number of HCA Handles 2843 hca_object Maximum number of HCA Objects 2844 ========== ============================= 2845 2846 An example for mlx4 and ocrdma device follows:: 2847 2848 mlx4_0 hca_handle=2 hca_object=2000 2849 ocrdma1 hca_handle=3 hca_object=max 2850 2851 For devices with duplicate names, select the device by index:: 2852 2853 echo "rxe0 index=5 hca_handle=2" > rdma.max 2854 2855 rdma.current 2856 A read-only file that describes current resource usage. 2857 It exists for all the cgroup except root. 2858 2859 An example for mlx4 and ocrdma device follows:: 2860 2861 mlx4_0 hca_handle=1 hca_object=20 2862 ocrdma1 hca_handle=1 hca_object=23 2863 2864 rdma.peak 2865 A read-only nested-keyed file that exists for all the cgroups 2866 except root. It shows the historical high watermark of 2867 resource usage per device since the cgroup was created. 2868 2869 An example for mlx4 and ocrdma device follows:: 2870 2871 mlx4_0 hca_handle=1 hca_object=20 2872 ocrdma1 hca_handle=0 hca_object=23 2873 2874 rdma.events 2875 A read-only nested-keyed file which exists on non-root 2876 cgroups. The following nested keys are defined. 2877 2878 max 2879 The number of times a process in this cgroup or its 2880 descendants attempted an RDMA resource allocation that 2881 was rejected because a rdma.max limit in the subtree 2882 was reached. This is a hierarchical counter: the event 2883 is propagated upward to all ancestor cgroups. A value 2884 change in this file generates a file modified event. 2885 2886 alloc_fail 2887 The number of RDMA resource allocation attempts that 2888 originated in this cgroup or its descendants and failed 2889 due to a rdma.max limit being reached. This is a 2890 hierarchical counter propagated upward. 2891 2892 An example for mlx4 device follows:: 2893 2894 mlx4_0 hca_handle.max=5 hca_handle.alloc_fail=3 hca_object.max=0 hca_object.alloc_fail=0 2895 2896 rdma.events.local 2897 Similar to rdma.events but the fields in the file are local 2898 to the cgroup i.e. not hierarchical. The file modified event 2899 generated on this file reflects only the local events. 2900 2901 The following nested keys are defined. 2902 2903 max 2904 The number of times a process in this cgroup or its 2905 descendants attempted an RDMA resource allocation that 2906 was rejected because this cgroup's own rdma.max limit 2907 was reached. 2908 alloc_fail 2909 The number of RDMA resource allocation attempts 2910 originating from this cgroup that failed due to this 2911 cgroup's or an ancestor's rdma.max limit. 2912 2913 An example for mlx4 device follows:: 2914 2915 mlx4_0 hca_handle.max=5 hca_handle.alloc_fail=0 hca_object.max=0 hca_object.alloc_fail=0 2916 2917DMEM 2918---- 2919 2920The "dmem" controller regulates the distribution and accounting of 2921device memory regions. Because each memory region may have its own page size, 2922which does not have to be equal to the system page size, the units are always bytes. 2923 2924DMEM Interface Files 2925~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 2926 2927 dmem.max, dmem.min, dmem.low 2928 A readwrite nested-keyed file that exists for all the cgroups 2929 except root that describes current configured resource limit 2930 for a region. 2931 2932 An example for xe follows:: 2933 2934 drm/0000:03:00.0/vram0 1073741824 2935 drm/0000:03:00.0/stolen max 2936 2937 The semantics are the same as for the memory cgroup controller, and are 2938 calculated in the same way. 2939 2940 dmem.peak 2941 A read-only nested-keyed file that exists on non-root cgroups. 2942 2943 The max device memory usage recorded for the cgroup and its 2944 descendants since the creation of the cgroup for each region. 2945 2946 dmem.capacity 2947 A read-only file that describes maximum region capacity. 2948 It only exists on the root cgroup. Not all memory can be 2949 allocated by cgroups, as the kernel reserves some for 2950 internal use. 2951 2952 An example for xe follows:: 2953 2954 drm/0000:03:00.0/vram0 8514437120 2955 drm/0000:03:00.0/stolen 67108864 2956 2957 dmem.current 2958 A read-only file that describes current resource usage. 2959 It exists for all the cgroup except root. 2960 2961 An example for xe follows:: 2962 2963 drm/0000:03:00.0/vram0 12550144 2964 drm/0000:03:00.0/stolen 8650752 2965 2966HugeTLB 2967------- 2968 2969The HugeTLB controller allows limiting the HugeTLB usage per control group and 2970enforces the controller limit during page fault. 2971 2972HugeTLB Interface Files 2973~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 2974 2975 hugetlb.<hugepagesize>.current 2976 Show current usage for "hugepagesize" hugetlb. It exists for all 2977 the cgroup except root. 2978 2979 hugetlb.<hugepagesize>.max 2980 Set/show the hard limit of "hugepagesize" hugetlb usage. 2981 The default value is "max". It exists for all the cgroup except root. 2982 2983 hugetlb.<hugepagesize>.events 2984 A read-only flat-keyed file which exists on non-root cgroups. 2985 2986 max 2987 The number of allocation failure due to HugeTLB limit 2988 2989 hugetlb.<hugepagesize>.events.local 2990 Similar to hugetlb.<hugepagesize>.events but the fields in the file 2991 are local to the cgroup i.e. not hierarchical. The file modified event 2992 generated on this file reflects only the local events. 2993 2994 hugetlb.<hugepagesize>.numa_stat 2995 Similar to memory.numa_stat, it shows the numa information of the 2996 hugetlb pages of <hugepagesize> in this cgroup. Only active in 2997 use hugetlb pages are included. The per-node values are in bytes. 2998 2999Misc 3000---- 3001 3002The Miscellaneous cgroup provides the resource limiting and tracking 3003mechanism for the scalar resources which cannot be abstracted like the other 3004cgroup resources. Controller is enabled by the CONFIG_CGROUP_MISC config 3005option. 3006 3007A resource can be added to the controller via enum misc_res_type{} in the 3008include/linux/misc_cgroup.h file and the corresponding name via misc_res_name[] 3009in the kernel/cgroup/misc.c file. Provider of the resource must set its 3010capacity prior to using the resource by calling misc_cg_set_capacity(). 3011 3012Once a capacity is set then the resource usage can be updated using charge and 3013uncharge APIs. All of the APIs to interact with misc controller are in 3014include/linux/misc_cgroup.h. 3015 3016Misc Interface Files 3017~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 3018 3019Miscellaneous controller provides the following interface files. If two misc 3020resources (res_a and res_b) are registered then: 3021 3022 misc.capacity 3023 A read-only flat-keyed file shown only in the root cgroup. It shows 3024 miscellaneous scalar resources available on the platform along with 3025 their quantities:: 3026 3027 $ cat misc.capacity 3028 res_a 50 3029 res_b 10 3030 3031 misc.current 3032 A read-only flat-keyed file shown in the all cgroups. It shows 3033 the current usage of the resources in the cgroup and its children.:: 3034 3035 $ cat misc.current 3036 res_a 3 3037 res_b 0 3038 3039 misc.peak 3040 A read-only flat-keyed file shown in all cgroups. It shows the 3041 historical maximum usage of the resources in the cgroup and its 3042 children.:: 3043 3044 $ cat misc.peak 3045 res_a 10 3046 res_b 8 3047 3048 misc.max 3049 A read-write flat-keyed file shown in the non root cgroups. Allowed 3050 maximum usage of the resources in the cgroup and its children.:: 3051 3052 $ cat misc.max 3053 res_a max 3054 res_b 4 3055 3056 Limit can be set by:: 3057 3058 # echo res_a 1 > misc.max 3059 3060 Limit can be set to max by:: 3061 3062 # echo res_a max > misc.max 3063 3064 Limits can be set higher than the capacity value in the misc.capacity 3065 file. 3066 3067 misc.events 3068 A read-only flat-keyed file which exists on non-root cgroups. The 3069 following entries are defined. Unless specified otherwise, a value 3070 change in this file generates a file modified event. All fields in 3071 this file are hierarchical. 3072 3073 <res>.max 3074 The number of times the cgroup's resource usage was 3075 about to go over the max boundary. 3076 3077 misc.events.local 3078 Similar to misc.events but the fields in the file are local to the 3079 cgroup i.e. not hierarchical. The file modified event generated on 3080 this file reflects only the local events. 3081 3082Migration and Ownership 3083~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 3084 3085A miscellaneous scalar resource is charged to the cgroup in which it is used 3086first, and stays charged to that cgroup until that resource is freed. Migrating 3087a process to a different cgroup does not move the charge to the destination 3088cgroup where the process has moved. 3089 3090Others 3091------ 3092 3093perf_event 3094~~~~~~~~~~ 3095 3096perf_event controller, if not mounted on a legacy hierarchy, is 3097automatically enabled on the v2 hierarchy so that perf events can 3098always be filtered by cgroup v2 path. The controller can still be 3099moved to a legacy hierarchy after v2 hierarchy is populated. 3100 3101 3102Non-normative information 3103------------------------- 3104 3105This section contains information that isn't considered to be a part of 3106the stable kernel API and so is subject to change. 3107 3108 3109CPU controller root cgroup process behaviour 3110~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 3111 3112When distributing CPU cycles in the root cgroup each thread in this 3113cgroup is treated as if it was hosted in a separate child cgroup of the 3114root cgroup. This child cgroup weight is dependent on its thread nice 3115level. 3116 3117For details of this mapping see sched_prio_to_weight array in 3118kernel/sched/core.c file (values from this array should be scaled 3119appropriately so the neutral - nice 0 - value is 100 instead of 1024). 3120 3121 3122IO controller root cgroup process behaviour 3123~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 3124 3125Root cgroup processes are hosted in an implicit leaf child node. 3126When distributing IO resources this implicit child node is taken into 3127account as if it was a normal child cgroup of the root cgroup with a 3128weight value of 200. 3129 3130 3131Namespace 3132========= 3133 3134Basics 3135------ 3136 3137cgroup namespace provides a mechanism to virtualize the view of the 3138"/proc/$PID/cgroup" file and cgroup mounts. The CLONE_NEWCGROUP clone 3139flag can be used with clone(2) and unshare(2) to create a new cgroup 3140namespace. The process running inside the cgroup namespace will have 3141its "/proc/$PID/cgroup" output restricted to cgroupns root. The 3142cgroupns root is the cgroup of the process at the time of creation of 3143the cgroup namespace. 3144 3145Without cgroup namespace, the "/proc/$PID/cgroup" file shows the 3146complete path of the cgroup of a process. In a container setup where 3147a set of cgroups and namespaces are intended to isolate processes the 3148"/proc/$PID/cgroup" file may leak potential system level information 3149to the isolated processes. For example:: 3150 3151 # cat /proc/self/cgroup 3152 0::/batchjobs/container_id1 3153 3154The path '/batchjobs/container_id1' can be considered as system-data 3155and undesirable to expose to the isolated processes. cgroup namespace 3156can be used to restrict visibility of this path. For example, before 3157creating a cgroup namespace, one would see:: 3158 3159 # ls -l /proc/self/ns/cgroup 3160 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2014-07-15 10:37 /proc/self/ns/cgroup -> cgroup:[4026531835] 3161 # cat /proc/self/cgroup 3162 0::/batchjobs/container_id1 3163 3164After unsharing a new namespace, the view changes:: 3165 3166 # ls -l /proc/self/ns/cgroup 3167 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2014-07-15 10:35 /proc/self/ns/cgroup -> cgroup:[4026532183] 3168 # cat /proc/self/cgroup 3169 0::/ 3170 3171When some thread from a multi-threaded process unshares its cgroup 3172namespace, the new cgroupns gets applied to the entire process (all 3173the threads). This is natural for the v2 hierarchy; however, for the 3174legacy hierarchies, this may be unexpected. 3175 3176A cgroup namespace is alive as long as there are processes inside or 3177mounts pinning it. When the last usage goes away, the cgroup 3178namespace is destroyed. The cgroupns root and the actual cgroups 3179remain. 3180 3181 3182The Root and Views 3183------------------ 3184 3185The 'cgroupns root' for a cgroup namespace is the cgroup in which the 3186process calling unshare(2) is running. For example, if a process in 3187/batchjobs/container_id1 cgroup calls unshare, cgroup 3188/batchjobs/container_id1 becomes the cgroupns root. For the 3189init_cgroup_ns, this is the real root ('/') cgroup. 3190 3191The cgroupns root cgroup does not change even if the namespace creator 3192process later moves to a different cgroup:: 3193 3194 # ~/unshare -c # unshare cgroupns in some cgroup 3195 # cat /proc/self/cgroup 3196 0::/ 3197 # mkdir sub_cgrp_1 3198 # echo 0 > sub_cgrp_1/cgroup.procs 3199 # cat /proc/self/cgroup 3200 0::/sub_cgrp_1 3201 3202Each process gets its namespace-specific view of "/proc/$PID/cgroup" 3203 3204Processes running inside the cgroup namespace will be able to see 3205cgroup paths (in /proc/self/cgroup) only inside their root cgroup. 3206From within an unshared cgroupns:: 3207 3208 # sleep 100000 & 3209 [1] 7353 3210 # echo 7353 > sub_cgrp_1/cgroup.procs 3211 # cat /proc/7353/cgroup 3212 0::/sub_cgrp_1 3213 3214From the initial cgroup namespace, the real cgroup path will be 3215visible:: 3216 3217 $ cat /proc/7353/cgroup 3218 0::/batchjobs/container_id1/sub_cgrp_1 3219 3220From a sibling cgroup namespace (that is, a namespace rooted at a 3221different cgroup), the cgroup path relative to its own cgroup 3222namespace root will be shown. For instance, if PID 7353's cgroup 3223namespace root is at '/batchjobs/container_id2', then it will see:: 3224 3225 # cat /proc/7353/cgroup 3226 0::/../container_id2/sub_cgrp_1 3227 3228Note that the relative path always starts with '/' to indicate that 3229its relative to the cgroup namespace root of the caller. 3230 3231 3232Migration and setns(2) 3233---------------------- 3234 3235Processes inside a cgroup namespace can move into and out of the 3236namespace root if they have proper access to external cgroups. For 3237example, from inside a namespace with cgroupns root at 3238/batchjobs/container_id1, and assuming that the global hierarchy is 3239still accessible inside cgroupns:: 3240 3241 # cat /proc/7353/cgroup 3242 0::/sub_cgrp_1 3243 # echo 7353 > batchjobs/container_id2/cgroup.procs 3244 # cat /proc/7353/cgroup 3245 0::/../container_id2 3246 3247Note that this kind of setup is not encouraged. A task inside cgroup 3248namespace should only be exposed to its own cgroupns hierarchy. 3249 3250setns(2) to another cgroup namespace is allowed when: 3251 3252(a) the process has CAP_SYS_ADMIN against its current user namespace 3253(b) the process has CAP_SYS_ADMIN against the target cgroup 3254 namespace's userns 3255 3256No implicit cgroup changes happen with attaching to another cgroup 3257namespace. It is expected that the someone moves the attaching 3258process under the target cgroup namespace root. 3259 3260 3261Interaction with Other Namespaces 3262--------------------------------- 3263 3264Namespace specific cgroup hierarchy can be mounted by a process 3265running inside a non-init cgroup namespace:: 3266 3267 # mount -t cgroup2 none $MOUNT_POINT 3268 3269This will mount the unified cgroup hierarchy with cgroupns root as the 3270filesystem root. The process needs CAP_SYS_ADMIN against its user and 3271mount namespaces. 3272 3273The virtualization of /proc/self/cgroup file combined with restricting 3274the view of cgroup hierarchy by namespace-private cgroupfs mount 3275provides a properly isolated cgroup view inside the container. 3276 3277 3278Information on Kernel Programming 3279================================= 3280 3281This section contains kernel programming information in the areas 3282where interacting with cgroup is necessary. cgroup core and 3283controllers are not covered. 3284 3285 3286Filesystem Support for Writeback 3287-------------------------------- 3288 3289A filesystem can support cgroup writeback by updating 3290address_space_operations->writepages() to annotate bio's using the 3291following two functions. 3292 3293 wbc_init_bio(@wbc, @bio) 3294 Should be called for each bio carrying writeback data and 3295 associates the bio with the inode's owner cgroup and the 3296 corresponding request queue. This must be called after 3297 a queue (device) has been associated with the bio and 3298 before submission. 3299 3300 wbc_account_cgroup_owner(@wbc, @folio, @bytes) 3301 Should be called for each data segment being written out. 3302 While this function doesn't care exactly when it's called 3303 during the writeback session, it's the easiest and most 3304 natural to call it as data segments are added to a bio. 3305 3306With writeback bio's annotated, cgroup support can be enabled per 3307super_block by setting SB_I_CGROUPWB in ->s_iflags. This allows for 3308selective disabling of cgroup writeback support which is helpful when 3309certain filesystem features, e.g. journaled data mode, are 3310incompatible. 3311 3312wbc_init_bio() binds the specified bio to its cgroup. Depending on 3313the configuration, the bio may be executed at a lower priority and if 3314the writeback session is holding shared resources, e.g. a journal 3315entry, may lead to priority inversion. There is no one easy solution 3316for the problem. Filesystems can try to work around specific problem 3317cases by skipping wbc_init_bio() and using bio_associate_blkg() 3318directly. 3319 3320 3321Deprecated v1 Core Features 3322=========================== 3323 3324- Multiple hierarchies including named ones are not supported. 3325 3326- All v1 mount options are not supported. 3327 3328- The "tasks" file is removed and "cgroup.procs" is not sorted. 3329 3330- "cgroup.clone_children" is removed. 3331 3332- /proc/cgroups is meaningless for v2. Use "cgroup.controllers" or 3333 "cgroup.stat" files at the root instead. 3334 3335 3336Issues with v1 and Rationales for v2 3337==================================== 3338 3339Multiple Hierarchies 3340-------------------- 3341 3342cgroup v1 allowed an arbitrary number of hierarchies and each 3343hierarchy could host any number of controllers. While this seemed to 3344provide a high level of flexibility, it wasn't useful in practice. 3345 3346For example, as there is only one instance of each controller, utility 3347type controllers such as freezer which can be useful in all 3348hierarchies could only be used in one. The issue is exacerbated by 3349the fact that controllers couldn't be moved to another hierarchy once 3350hierarchies were populated. Another issue was that all controllers 3351bound to a hierarchy were forced to have exactly the same view of the 3352hierarchy. It wasn't possible to vary the granularity depending on 3353the specific controller. 3354 3355In practice, these issues heavily limited which controllers could be 3356put on the same hierarchy and most configurations resorted to putting 3357each controller on its own hierarchy. Only closely related ones, such 3358as the cpu and cpuacct controllers, made sense to be put on the same 3359hierarchy. This often meant that userland ended up managing multiple 3360similar hierarchies repeating the same steps on each hierarchy 3361whenever a hierarchy management operation was necessary. 3362 3363Furthermore, support for multiple hierarchies came at a steep cost. 3364It greatly complicated cgroup core implementation but more importantly 3365the support for multiple hierarchies restricted how cgroup could be 3366used in general and what controllers was able to do. 3367 3368There was no limit on how many hierarchies there might be, which meant 3369that a thread's cgroup membership couldn't be described in finite 3370length. The key might contain any number of entries and was unlimited 3371in length, which made it highly awkward to manipulate and led to 3372addition of controllers which existed only to identify membership, 3373which in turn exacerbated the original problem of proliferating number 3374of hierarchies. 3375 3376Also, as a controller couldn't have any expectation regarding the 3377topologies of hierarchies other controllers might be on, each 3378controller had to assume that all other controllers were attached to 3379completely orthogonal hierarchies. This made it impossible, or at 3380least very cumbersome, for controllers to cooperate with each other. 3381 3382In most use cases, putting controllers on hierarchies which are 3383completely orthogonal to each other isn't necessary. What usually is 3384called for is the ability to have differing levels of granularity 3385depending on the specific controller. In other words, hierarchy may 3386be collapsed from leaf towards root when viewed from specific 3387controllers. For example, a given configuration might not care about 3388how memory is distributed beyond a certain level while still wanting 3389to control how CPU cycles are distributed. 3390 3391 3392Thread Granularity 3393------------------ 3394 3395cgroup v1 allowed threads of a process to belong to different cgroups. 3396This didn't make sense for some controllers and those controllers 3397ended up implementing different ways to ignore such situations but 3398much more importantly it blurred the line between API exposed to 3399individual applications and system management interface. 3400 3401Generally, in-process knowledge is available only to the process 3402itself; thus, unlike service-level organization of processes, 3403categorizing threads of a process requires active participation from 3404the application which owns the target process. 3405 3406cgroup v1 had an ambiguously defined delegation model which got abused 3407in combination with thread granularity. cgroups were delegated to 3408individual applications so that they can create and manage their own 3409sub-hierarchies and control resource distributions along them. This 3410effectively raised cgroup to the status of a syscall-like API exposed 3411to lay programs. 3412 3413First of all, cgroup has a fundamentally inadequate interface to be 3414exposed this way. For a process to access its own knobs, it has to 3415extract the path on the target hierarchy from /proc/self/cgroup, 3416construct the path by appending the name of the knob to the path, open 3417and then read and/or write to it. This is not only extremely clunky 3418and unusual but also inherently racy. There is no conventional way to 3419define transaction across the required steps and nothing can guarantee 3420that the process would actually be operating on its own sub-hierarchy. 3421 3422cgroup controllers implemented a number of knobs which would never be 3423accepted as public APIs because they were just adding control knobs to 3424system-management pseudo filesystem. cgroup ended up with interface 3425knobs which were not properly abstracted or refined and directly 3426revealed kernel internal details. These knobs got exposed to 3427individual applications through the ill-defined delegation mechanism 3428effectively abusing cgroup as a shortcut to implementing public APIs 3429without going through the required scrutiny. 3430 3431This was painful for both userland and kernel. Userland ended up with 3432misbehaving and poorly abstracted interfaces and kernel exposing and 3433locked into constructs inadvertently. 3434 3435 3436Competition Between Inner Nodes and Threads 3437------------------------------------------- 3438 3439cgroup v1 allowed threads to be in any cgroups which created an 3440interesting problem where threads belonging to a parent cgroup and its 3441children cgroups competed for resources. This was nasty as two 3442different types of entities competed and there was no obvious way to 3443settle it. Different controllers did different things. 3444 3445The cpu controller considered threads and cgroups as equivalents and 3446mapped nice levels to cgroup weights. This worked for some cases but 3447fell flat when children wanted to be allocated specific ratios of CPU 3448cycles and the number of internal threads fluctuated - the ratios 3449constantly changed as the number of competing entities fluctuated. 3450There also were other issues. The mapping from nice level to weight 3451wasn't obvious or universal, and there were various other knobs which 3452simply weren't available for threads. 3453 3454The io controller implicitly created a hidden leaf node for each 3455cgroup to host the threads. The hidden leaf had its own copies of all 3456the knobs with ``leaf_`` prefixed. While this allowed equivalent 3457control over internal threads, it was with serious drawbacks. It 3458always added an extra layer of nesting which wouldn't be necessary 3459otherwise, made the interface messy and significantly complicated the 3460implementation. 3461 3462The memory controller didn't have a way to control what happened 3463between internal tasks and child cgroups and the behavior was not 3464clearly defined. There were attempts to add ad-hoc behaviors and 3465knobs to tailor the behavior to specific workloads which would have 3466led to problems extremely difficult to resolve in the long term. 3467 3468Multiple controllers struggled with internal tasks and came up with 3469different ways to deal with it; unfortunately, all the approaches were 3470severely flawed and, furthermore, the widely different behaviors 3471made cgroup as a whole highly inconsistent. 3472 3473This clearly is a problem which needs to be addressed from cgroup core 3474in a uniform way. 3475 3476 3477Other Interface Issues 3478---------------------- 3479 3480cgroup v1 grew without oversight and developed a large number of 3481idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies. One issue on the cgroup core side 3482was how an empty cgroup was notified - a userland helper binary was 3483forked and executed for each event. The event delivery wasn't 3484recursive or delegatable. The limitations of the mechanism also led 3485to in-kernel event delivery filtering mechanism further complicating 3486the interface. 3487 3488Controller interfaces were problematic too. An extreme example is 3489controllers completely ignoring hierarchical organization and treating 3490all cgroups as if they were all located directly under the root 3491cgroup. Some controllers exposed a large amount of inconsistent 3492implementation details to userland. 3493 3494There also was no consistency across controllers. When a new cgroup 3495was created, some controllers defaulted to not imposing extra 3496restrictions while others disallowed any resource usage until 3497explicitly configured. Configuration knobs for the same type of 3498control used widely differing naming schemes and formats. Statistics 3499and information knobs were named arbitrarily and used different 3500formats and units even in the same controller. 3501 3502cgroup v2 establishes common conventions where appropriate and updates 3503controllers so that they expose minimal and consistent interfaces. 3504 3505 3506Controller Issues and Remedies 3507------------------------------ 3508 3509Memory 3510~~~~~~ 3511 3512The original lower boundary, the soft limit, is defined as a limit 3513that is per default unset. As a result, the set of cgroups that 3514global reclaim prefers is opt-in, rather than opt-out. The costs for 3515optimizing these mostly negative lookups are so high that the 3516implementation, despite its enormous size, does not even provide the 3517basic desirable behavior. First off, the soft limit has no 3518hierarchical meaning. All configured groups are organized in a global 3519rbtree and treated like equal peers, regardless where they are located 3520in the hierarchy. This makes subtree delegation impossible. Second, 3521the soft limit reclaim pass is so aggressive that it not just 3522introduces high allocation latencies into the system, but also impacts 3523system performance due to overreclaim, to the point where the feature 3524becomes self-defeating. 3525 3526The memory.low boundary on the other hand is a top-down allocated 3527reserve. A cgroup enjoys reclaim protection when it's within its 3528effective low, which makes delegation of subtrees possible. It also 3529enjoys having reclaim pressure proportional to its overage when 3530above its effective low. 3531 3532The original high boundary, the hard limit, is defined as a strict 3533limit that can not budge, even if the OOM killer has to be called. 3534But this generally goes against the goal of making the most out of the 3535available memory. The memory consumption of workloads varies during 3536runtime, and that requires users to overcommit. But doing that with a 3537strict upper limit requires either a fairly accurate prediction of the 3538working set size or adding slack to the limit. Since working set size 3539estimation is hard and error prone, and getting it wrong results in 3540OOM kills, most users tend to err on the side of a looser limit and 3541end up wasting precious resources. 3542 3543The memory.high boundary on the other hand can be set much more 3544conservatively. When hit, it throttles allocations by forcing them 3545into direct reclaim to work off the excess, but it never invokes the 3546OOM killer. As a result, a high boundary that is chosen too 3547aggressively will not terminate the processes, but instead it will 3548lead to gradual performance degradation. The user can monitor this 3549and make corrections until the minimal memory footprint that still 3550gives acceptable performance is found. 3551 3552In extreme cases, with many concurrent allocations and a complete 3553breakdown of reclaim progress within the group, the high boundary can 3554be exceeded. But even then it's mostly better to satisfy the 3555allocation from the slack available in other groups or the rest of the 3556system than killing the group. Otherwise, memory.max is there to 3557limit this type of spillover and ultimately contain buggy or even 3558malicious applications. 3559 3560Setting the original memory.limit_in_bytes below the current usage was 3561subject to a race condition, where concurrent charges could cause the 3562limit setting to fail. memory.max on the other hand will first set the 3563limit to prevent new charges, and then reclaim and OOM kill until the 3564new limit is met - or the task writing to memory.max is killed. 3565 3566The combined memory+swap accounting and limiting is replaced by real 3567control over swap space. 3568 3569The main argument for a combined memory+swap facility in the original 3570cgroup design was that global or parental pressure would always be 3571able to swap all anonymous memory of a child group, regardless of the 3572child's own (possibly untrusted) configuration. However, untrusted 3573groups can sabotage swapping by other means - such as referencing its 3574anonymous memory in a tight loop - and an admin can not assume full 3575swappability when overcommitting untrusted jobs. 3576 3577For trusted jobs, on the other hand, a combined counter is not an 3578intuitive userspace interface, and it flies in the face of the idea 3579that cgroup controllers should account and limit specific physical 3580resources. Swap space is a resource like all others in the system, 3581and that's why unified hierarchy allows distributing it separately. 3582