xref: /linux/Documentation/admin-guide/cgroup-v2.rst (revision 3a2c4d55e32ad65efebdb6de44eef3bfa08bb49d)
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