mm: memcg: shorten preempt-disabled section around event checks
[deliverable/linux.git] / Documentation / cgroups / memory.txt
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1Memory Resource Controller
2
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3NOTE: The Memory Resource Controller has generically been referred to as the
4 memory controller in this document. Do not confuse memory controller
5 used here with the memory controller that is used in hardware.
1b6df3aa 6
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7(For editors)
8In this document:
9 When we mention a cgroup (cgroupfs's directory) with memory controller,
10 we call it "memory cgroup". When you see git-log and source code, you'll
11 see patch's title and function names tend to use "memcg".
12 In this document, we avoid using it.
1b6df3aa 13
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14Benefits and Purpose of the memory controller
15
16The memory controller isolates the memory behaviour of a group of tasks
17from the rest of the system. The article on LWN [12] mentions some probable
18uses of the memory controller. The memory controller can be used to
19
20a. Isolate an application or a group of applications
21 Memory hungry applications can be isolated and limited to a smaller
22 amount of memory.
23b. Create a cgroup with limited amount of memory, this can be used
24 as a good alternative to booting with mem=XXXX.
25c. Virtualization solutions can control the amount of memory they want
26 to assign to a virtual machine instance.
27d. A CD/DVD burner could control the amount of memory used by the
28 rest of the system to ensure that burning does not fail due to lack
29 of available memory.
30e. There are several other use cases, find one or use the controller just
31 for fun (to learn and hack on the VM subsystem).
32
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33Current Status: linux-2.6.34-mmotm(development version of 2010/April)
34
35Features:
36 - accounting anonymous pages, file caches, swap caches usage and limiting them.
37 - private LRU and reclaim routine. (system's global LRU and private LRU
38 work independently from each other)
39 - optionally, memory+swap usage can be accounted and limited.
40 - hierarchical accounting
41 - soft limit
42 - moving(recharging) account at moving a task is selectable.
43 - usage threshold notifier
44 - oom-killer disable knob and oom-notifier
45 - Root cgroup has no limit controls.
46
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47 Kernel memory support is work in progress, and the current version provides
48 basically functionality. (See Section 2.7)
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49
50Brief summary of control files.
51
52 tasks # attach a task(thread) and show list of threads
53 cgroup.procs # show list of processes
54 cgroup.event_control # an interface for event_fd()
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55 memory.usage_in_bytes # show current res_counter usage for memory
56 (See 5.5 for details)
57 memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes # show current res_counter usage for memory+Swap
58 (See 5.5 for details)
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59 memory.limit_in_bytes # set/show limit of memory usage
60 memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes # set/show limit of memory+Swap usage
61 memory.failcnt # show the number of memory usage hits limits
62 memory.memsw.failcnt # show the number of memory+Swap hits limits
63 memory.max_usage_in_bytes # show max memory usage recorded
64 memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes # show max memory+Swap usage recorded
65 memory.soft_limit_in_bytes # set/show soft limit of memory usage
66 memory.stat # show various statistics
67 memory.use_hierarchy # set/show hierarchical account enabled
68 memory.force_empty # trigger forced move charge to parent
69 memory.swappiness # set/show swappiness parameter of vmscan
70 (See sysctl's vm.swappiness)
71 memory.move_charge_at_immigrate # set/show controls of moving charges
72 memory.oom_control # set/show oom controls.
50c35e5b 73 memory.numa_stat # show the number of memory usage per numa node
dc10e281 74
3aaabe23 75 memory.kmem.tcp.limit_in_bytes # set/show hard limit for tcp buf memory
5a6dd343 76 memory.kmem.tcp.usage_in_bytes # show current tcp buf memory allocation
e5671dfa 77
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781. History
79
80The memory controller has a long history. A request for comments for the memory
81controller was posted by Balbir Singh [1]. At the time the RFC was posted
82there were several implementations for memory control. The goal of the
83RFC was to build consensus and agreement for the minimal features required
84for memory control. The first RSS controller was posted by Balbir Singh[2]
85in Feb 2007. Pavel Emelianov [3][4][5] has since posted three versions of the
86RSS controller. At OLS, at the resource management BoF, everyone suggested
87that we handle both page cache and RSS together. Another request was raised
88to allow user space handling of OOM. The current memory controller is
89at version 6; it combines both mapped (RSS) and unmapped Page
90Cache Control [11].
91
922. Memory Control
93
94Memory is a unique resource in the sense that it is present in a limited
95amount. If a task requires a lot of CPU processing, the task can spread
96its processing over a period of hours, days, months or years, but with
97memory, the same physical memory needs to be reused to accomplish the task.
98
99The memory controller implementation has been divided into phases. These
100are:
101
1021. Memory controller
1032. mlock(2) controller
1043. Kernel user memory accounting and slab control
1054. user mappings length controller
106
107The memory controller is the first controller developed.
108
1092.1. Design
110
111The core of the design is a counter called the res_counter. The res_counter
112tracks the current memory usage and limit of the group of processes associated
113with the controller. Each cgroup has a memory controller specific data
114structure (mem_cgroup) associated with it.
115
1162.2. Accounting
117
118 +--------------------+
119 | mem_cgroup |
120 | (res_counter) |
121 +--------------------+
122 / ^ \
123 / | \
124 +---------------+ | +---------------+
125 | mm_struct | |.... | mm_struct |
126 | | | | |
127 +---------------+ | +---------------+
128 |
129 + --------------+
130 |
131 +---------------+ +------+--------+
132 | page +----------> page_cgroup|
133 | | | |
134 +---------------+ +---------------+
135
136 (Figure 1: Hierarchy of Accounting)
137
138
139Figure 1 shows the important aspects of the controller
140
1411. Accounting happens per cgroup
1422. Each mm_struct knows about which cgroup it belongs to
1433. Each page has a pointer to the page_cgroup, which in turn knows the
144 cgroup it belongs to
145
146The accounting is done as follows: mem_cgroup_charge() is invoked to setup
147the necessary data structures and check if the cgroup that is being charged
148is over its limit. If it is then reclaim is invoked on the cgroup.
149More details can be found in the reclaim section of this document.
150If everything goes well, a page meta-data-structure called page_cgroup is
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151updated. page_cgroup has its own LRU on cgroup.
152(*) page_cgroup structure is allocated at boot/memory-hotplug time.
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153
1542.2.1 Accounting details
155
5b4e655e 156All mapped anon pages (RSS) and cache pages (Page Cache) are accounted.
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157Some pages which are never reclaimable and will not be on the global LRU
158are not accounted. We just account pages under usual VM management.
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159
160RSS pages are accounted at page_fault unless they've already been accounted
161for earlier. A file page will be accounted for as Page Cache when it's
162inserted into inode (radix-tree). While it's mapped into the page tables of
163processes, duplicate accounting is carefully avoided.
164
165A RSS page is unaccounted when it's fully unmapped. A PageCache page is
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166unaccounted when it's removed from radix-tree. Even if RSS pages are fully
167unmapped (by kswapd), they may exist as SwapCache in the system until they
168are really freed. Such SwapCaches also also accounted.
169A swapped-in page is not accounted until it's mapped.
170
171Note: The kernel does swapin-readahead and read multiple swaps at once.
172This means swapped-in pages may contain pages for other tasks than a task
173causing page fault. So, we avoid accounting at swap-in I/O.
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174
175At page migration, accounting information is kept.
176
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177Note: we just account pages-on-LRU because our purpose is to control amount
178of used pages; not-on-LRU pages tend to be out-of-control from VM view.
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179
1802.3 Shared Page Accounting
181
182Shared pages are accounted on the basis of the first touch approach. The
183cgroup that first touches a page is accounted for the page. The principle
184behind this approach is that a cgroup that aggressively uses a shared
185page will eventually get charged for it (once it is uncharged from
186the cgroup that brought it in -- this will happen on memory pressure).
187
67de0162 188Exception: If CONFIG_CGROUP_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR_SWAP is not used.
8c7c6e34 189When you do swapoff and make swapped-out pages of shmem(tmpfs) to
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190be backed into memory in force, charges for pages are accounted against the
191caller of swapoff rather than the users of shmem.
192
193
8c7c6e34 1942.4 Swap Extension (CONFIG_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR_SWAP)
dc10e281 195
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196Swap Extension allows you to record charge for swap. A swapped-in page is
197charged back to original page allocator if possible.
198
199When swap is accounted, following files are added.
200 - memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes.
201 - memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes.
202
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203memsw means memory+swap. Usage of memory+swap is limited by
204memsw.limit_in_bytes.
205
206Example: Assume a system with 4G of swap. A task which allocates 6G of memory
207(by mistake) under 2G memory limitation will use all swap.
208In this case, setting memsw.limit_in_bytes=3G will prevent bad use of swap.
209By using memsw limit, you can avoid system OOM which can be caused by swap
210shortage.
8c7c6e34 211
dc10e281 212* why 'memory+swap' rather than swap.
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213The global LRU(kswapd) can swap out arbitrary pages. Swap-out means
214to move account from memory to swap...there is no change in usage of
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215memory+swap. In other words, when we want to limit the usage of swap without
216affecting global LRU, memory+swap limit is better than just limiting swap from
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217OS point of view.
218
219* What happens when a cgroup hits memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes
67de0162 220When a cgroup hits memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes, it's useless to do swap-out
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221in this cgroup. Then, swap-out will not be done by cgroup routine and file
222caches are dropped. But as mentioned above, global LRU can do swapout memory
223from it for sanity of the system's memory management state. You can't forbid
224it by cgroup.
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225
2262.5 Reclaim
1b6df3aa 227
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228Each cgroup maintains a per cgroup LRU which has the same structure as
229global VM. When a cgroup goes over its limit, we first try
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230to reclaim memory from the cgroup so as to make space for the new
231pages that the cgroup has touched. If the reclaim is unsuccessful,
232an OOM routine is invoked to select and kill the bulkiest task in the
dc10e281 233cgroup. (See 10. OOM Control below.)
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234
235The reclaim algorithm has not been modified for cgroups, except that
236pages that are selected for reclaiming come from the per cgroup LRU
237list.
238
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239NOTE: Reclaim does not work for the root cgroup, since we cannot set any
240limits on the root cgroup.
241
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242Note2: When panic_on_oom is set to "2", the whole system will panic.
243
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244When oom event notifier is registered, event will be delivered.
245(See oom_control section)
246
dc10e281 2472.6 Locking
1b6df3aa 248
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249 lock_page_cgroup()/unlock_page_cgroup() should not be called under
250 mapping->tree_lock.
1b6df3aa 251
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252 Other lock order is following:
253 PG_locked.
254 mm->page_table_lock
255 zone->lru_lock
256 lock_page_cgroup.
257 In many cases, just lock_page_cgroup() is called.
258 per-zone-per-cgroup LRU (cgroup's private LRU) is just guarded by
259 zone->lru_lock, it has no lock of its own.
1b6df3aa 260
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2612.7 Kernel Memory Extension (CONFIG_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR_KMEM)
262
263With the Kernel memory extension, the Memory Controller is able to limit
264the amount of kernel memory used by the system. Kernel memory is fundamentally
265different than user memory, since it can't be swapped out, which makes it
266possible to DoS the system by consuming too much of this precious resource.
267
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268Kernel memory limits are not imposed for the root cgroup. Usage for the root
269cgroup may or may not be accounted.
270
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271Currently no soft limit is implemented for kernel memory. It is future work
272to trigger slab reclaim when those limits are reached.
273
2742.7.1 Current Kernel Memory resources accounted
275
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276* sockets memory pressure: some sockets protocols have memory pressure
277thresholds. The Memory Controller allows them to be controlled individually
278per cgroup, instead of globally.
e5671dfa 279
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280* tcp memory pressure: sockets memory pressure for the tcp protocol.
281
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2823. User Interface
283
2840. Configuration
285
286a. Enable CONFIG_CGROUPS
287b. Enable CONFIG_RESOURCE_COUNTERS
00f0b825 288c. Enable CONFIG_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR
dc10e281 289d. Enable CONFIG_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR_SWAP (to use swap extension)
1b6df3aa 290
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2911. Prepare the cgroups (see cgroups.txt, Why are cgroups needed?)
292# mount -t tmpfs none /sys/fs/cgroup
293# mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/memory
294# mount -t cgroup none /sys/fs/cgroup/memory -o memory
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295
2962. Make the new group and move bash into it
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297# mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0
298# echo $$ > /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0/tasks
1b6df3aa 299
dc10e281 300Since now we're in the 0 cgroup, we can alter the memory limit:
f6e07d38 301# echo 4M > /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0/memory.limit_in_bytes
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302
303NOTE: We can use a suffix (k, K, m, M, g or G) to indicate values in kilo,
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304mega or gigabytes. (Here, Kilo, Mega, Giga are Kibibytes, Mebibytes, Gibibytes.)
305
c5b947b2 306NOTE: We can write "-1" to reset the *.limit_in_bytes(unlimited).
4b3bde4c 307NOTE: We cannot set limits on the root cgroup any more.
0eea1030 308
f6e07d38 309# cat /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0/memory.limit_in_bytes
2324c5dd 3104194304
0eea1030 311
1b6df3aa 312We can check the usage:
f6e07d38 313# cat /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0/memory.usage_in_bytes
2324c5dd 3141216512
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315
316A successful write to this file does not guarantee a successful set of
dc10e281 317this limit to the value written into the file. This can be due to a
0eea1030 318number of factors, such as rounding up to page boundaries or the total
dc10e281 319availability of memory on the system. The user is required to re-read
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320this file after a write to guarantee the value committed by the kernel.
321
fb78922c 322# echo 1 > memory.limit_in_bytes
0eea1030 323# cat memory.limit_in_bytes
2324c5dd 3244096
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325
326The memory.failcnt field gives the number of times that the cgroup limit was
327exceeded.
328
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329The memory.stat file gives accounting information. Now, the number of
330caches, RSS and Active pages/Inactive pages are shown.
331
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3324. Testing
333
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334For testing features and implementation, see memcg_test.txt.
335
336Performance test is also important. To see pure memory controller's overhead,
337testing on tmpfs will give you good numbers of small overheads.
338Example: do kernel make on tmpfs.
339
340Page-fault scalability is also important. At measuring parallel
341page fault test, multi-process test may be better than multi-thread
342test because it has noise of shared objects/status.
343
344But the above two are testing extreme situations.
345Trying usual test under memory controller is always helpful.
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346
3474.1 Troubleshooting
348
349Sometimes a user might find that the application under a cgroup is
dc10e281 350terminated by OOM killer. There are several causes for this:
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351
3521. The cgroup limit is too low (just too low to do anything useful)
3532. The user is using anonymous memory and swap is turned off or too low
354
355A sync followed by echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches will help get rid of
356some of the pages cached in the cgroup (page cache pages).
357
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358To know what happens, disable OOM_Kill by 10. OOM Control(see below) and
359seeing what happens will be helpful.
360
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3614.2 Task migration
362
a33f3224 363When a task migrates from one cgroup to another, its charge is not
7dc74be0 364carried forward by default. The pages allocated from the original cgroup still
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365remain charged to it, the charge is dropped when the page is freed or
366reclaimed.
367
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368You can move charges of a task along with task migration.
369See 8. "Move charges at task migration"
7dc74be0 370
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3714.3 Removing a cgroup
372
373A cgroup can be removed by rmdir, but as discussed in sections 4.1 and 4.2, a
374cgroup might have some charge associated with it, even though all
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375tasks have migrated away from it. (because we charge against pages, not
376against tasks.)
377
378Such charges are freed or moved to their parent. At moving, both of RSS
379and CACHES are moved to parent.
380rmdir() may return -EBUSY if freeing/moving fails. See 5.1 also.
1b6df3aa 381
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382Charges recorded in swap information is not updated at removal of cgroup.
383Recorded information is discarded and a cgroup which uses swap (swapcache)
384will be charged as a new owner of it.
385
386
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3875. Misc. interfaces.
388
3895.1 force_empty
390 memory.force_empty interface is provided to make cgroup's memory usage empty.
391 You can use this interface only when the cgroup has no tasks.
392 When writing anything to this
393
394 # echo 0 > memory.force_empty
395
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396 Almost all pages tracked by this memory cgroup will be unmapped and freed.
397 Some pages cannot be freed because they are locked or in-use. Such pages are
398 moved to parent and this cgroup will be empty. This may return -EBUSY if
399 VM is too busy to free/move all pages immediately.
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400
401 Typical use case of this interface is that calling this before rmdir().
402 Because rmdir() moves all pages to parent, some out-of-use page caches can be
403 moved to the parent. If you want to avoid that, force_empty will be useful.
404
7f016ee8 4055.2 stat file
c863d835 406
185efc0f 407memory.stat file includes following statistics
c863d835 408
dc10e281 409# per-memory cgroup local status
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410cache - # of bytes of page cache memory.
411rss - # of bytes of anonymous and swap cache memory.
dc10e281 412mapped_file - # of bytes of mapped file (includes tmpfs/shmem)
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413pgpgin - # of pages paged in (equivalent to # of charging events).
414pgpgout - # of pages paged out (equivalent to # of uncharging events).
dc10e281 415swap - # of bytes of swap usage
c863d835 416inactive_anon - # of bytes of anonymous memory and swap cache memory on
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417 LRU list.
418active_anon - # of bytes of anonymous and swap cache memory on active
419 inactive LRU list.
420inactive_file - # of bytes of file-backed memory on inactive LRU list.
421active_file - # of bytes of file-backed memory on active LRU list.
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422unevictable - # of bytes of memory that cannot be reclaimed (mlocked etc).
423
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424# status considering hierarchy (see memory.use_hierarchy settings)
425
426hierarchical_memory_limit - # of bytes of memory limit with regard to hierarchy
427 under which the memory cgroup is
428hierarchical_memsw_limit - # of bytes of memory+swap limit with regard to
429 hierarchy under which memory cgroup is.
430
431total_cache - sum of all children's "cache"
432total_rss - sum of all children's "rss"
433total_mapped_file - sum of all children's "cache"
434total_pgpgin - sum of all children's "pgpgin"
435total_pgpgout - sum of all children's "pgpgout"
436total_swap - sum of all children's "swap"
437total_inactive_anon - sum of all children's "inactive_anon"
438total_active_anon - sum of all children's "active_anon"
439total_inactive_file - sum of all children's "inactive_file"
440total_active_file - sum of all children's "active_file"
441total_unevictable - sum of all children's "unevictable"
442
443# The following additional stats are dependent on CONFIG_DEBUG_VM.
c863d835 444
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445recent_rotated_anon - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
446recent_rotated_file - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
447recent_scanned_anon - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
448recent_scanned_file - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
449
450Memo:
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451 recent_rotated means recent frequency of LRU rotation.
452 recent_scanned means recent # of scans to LRU.
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453 showing for better debug please see the code for meanings.
454
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455Note:
456 Only anonymous and swap cache memory is listed as part of 'rss' stat.
457 This should not be confused with the true 'resident set size' or the
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458 amount of physical memory used by the cgroup.
459 'rss + file_mapped" will give you resident set size of cgroup.
460 (Note: file and shmem may be shared among other cgroups. In that case,
461 file_mapped is accounted only when the memory cgroup is owner of page
462 cache.)
7f016ee8 463
a7885eb8 4645.3 swappiness
a7885eb8 465
dc10e281 466Similar to /proc/sys/vm/swappiness, but affecting a hierarchy of groups only.
a7885eb8 467
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468Following cgroups' swappiness can't be changed.
469- root cgroup (uses /proc/sys/vm/swappiness).
470- a cgroup which uses hierarchy and it has other cgroup(s) below it.
471- a cgroup which uses hierarchy and not the root of hierarchy.
472
4735.4 failcnt
474
475A memory cgroup provides memory.failcnt and memory.memsw.failcnt files.
476This failcnt(== failure count) shows the number of times that a usage counter
477hit its limit. When a memory cgroup hits a limit, failcnt increases and
478memory under it will be reclaimed.
479
480You can reset failcnt by writing 0 to failcnt file.
481# echo 0 > .../memory.failcnt
a7885eb8 482
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4835.5 usage_in_bytes
484
485For efficiency, as other kernel components, memory cgroup uses some optimization
486to avoid unnecessary cacheline false sharing. usage_in_bytes is affected by the
487method and doesn't show 'exact' value of memory(and swap) usage, it's an fuzz
488value for efficient access. (Of course, when necessary, it's synchronized.)
489If you want to know more exact memory usage, you should use RSS+CACHE(+SWAP)
490value in memory.stat(see 5.2).
491
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4925.6 numa_stat
493
494This is similar to numa_maps but operates on a per-memcg basis. This is
495useful for providing visibility into the numa locality information within
496an memcg since the pages are allowed to be allocated from any physical
497node. One of the usecases is evaluating application performance by
498combining this information with the application's cpu allocation.
499
500We export "total", "file", "anon" and "unevictable" pages per-node for
501each memcg. The ouput format of memory.numa_stat is:
502
503total=<total pages> N0=<node 0 pages> N1=<node 1 pages> ...
504file=<total file pages> N0=<node 0 pages> N1=<node 1 pages> ...
505anon=<total anon pages> N0=<node 0 pages> N1=<node 1 pages> ...
506unevictable=<total anon pages> N0=<node 0 pages> N1=<node 1 pages> ...
507
508And we have total = file + anon + unevictable.
509
52bc0d82 5106. Hierarchy support
c1e862c1 511
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512The memory controller supports a deep hierarchy and hierarchical accounting.
513The hierarchy is created by creating the appropriate cgroups in the
514cgroup filesystem. Consider for example, the following cgroup filesystem
515hierarchy
516
67de0162 517 root
52bc0d82 518 / | \
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519 / | \
520 a b c
521 | \
522 | \
523 d e
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524
525In the diagram above, with hierarchical accounting enabled, all memory
526usage of e, is accounted to its ancestors up until the root (i.e, c and root),
dc10e281 527that has memory.use_hierarchy enabled. If one of the ancestors goes over its
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528limit, the reclaim algorithm reclaims from the tasks in the ancestor and the
529children of the ancestor.
530
5316.1 Enabling hierarchical accounting and reclaim
532
dc10e281 533A memory cgroup by default disables the hierarchy feature. Support
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534can be enabled by writing 1 to memory.use_hierarchy file of the root cgroup
535
536# echo 1 > memory.use_hierarchy
537
538The feature can be disabled by
539
540# echo 0 > memory.use_hierarchy
541
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542NOTE1: Enabling/disabling will fail if either the cgroup already has other
543 cgroups created below it, or if the parent cgroup has use_hierarchy
544 enabled.
52bc0d82 545
daaf1e68 546NOTE2: When panic_on_oom is set to "2", the whole system will panic in
dc10e281 547 case of an OOM event in any cgroup.
52bc0d82 548
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5497. Soft limits
550
551Soft limits allow for greater sharing of memory. The idea behind soft limits
552is to allow control groups to use as much of the memory as needed, provided
553
554a. There is no memory contention
555b. They do not exceed their hard limit
556
dc10e281 557When the system detects memory contention or low memory, control groups
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558are pushed back to their soft limits. If the soft limit of each control
559group is very high, they are pushed back as much as possible to make
560sure that one control group does not starve the others of memory.
561
562Please note that soft limits is a best effort feature, it comes with
563no guarantees, but it does its best to make sure that when memory is
564heavily contended for, memory is allocated based on the soft limit
565hints/setup. Currently soft limit based reclaim is setup such that
566it gets invoked from balance_pgdat (kswapd).
567
5687.1 Interface
569
570Soft limits can be setup by using the following commands (in this example we
dc10e281 571assume a soft limit of 256 MiB)
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572
573# echo 256M > memory.soft_limit_in_bytes
574
575If we want to change this to 1G, we can at any time use
576
577# echo 1G > memory.soft_limit_in_bytes
578
579NOTE1: Soft limits take effect over a long period of time, since they involve
580 reclaiming memory for balancing between memory cgroups
581NOTE2: It is recommended to set the soft limit always below the hard limit,
582 otherwise the hard limit will take precedence.
583
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5848. Move charges at task migration
585
586Users can move charges associated with a task along with task migration, that
587is, uncharge task's pages from the old cgroup and charge them to the new cgroup.
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588This feature is not supported in !CONFIG_MMU environments because of lack of
589page tables.
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590
5918.1 Interface
592
593This feature is disabled by default. It can be enabled(and disabled again) by
594writing to memory.move_charge_at_immigrate of the destination cgroup.
595
596If you want to enable it:
597
598# echo (some positive value) > memory.move_charge_at_immigrate
599
600Note: Each bits of move_charge_at_immigrate has its own meaning about what type
601 of charges should be moved. See 8.2 for details.
602Note: Charges are moved only when you move mm->owner, IOW, a leader of a thread
603 group.
604Note: If we cannot find enough space for the task in the destination cgroup, we
605 try to make space by reclaiming memory. Task migration may fail if we
606 cannot make enough space.
dc10e281 607Note: It can take several seconds if you move charges much.
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608
609And if you want disable it again:
610
611# echo 0 > memory.move_charge_at_immigrate
612
6138.2 Type of charges which can be move
614
615Each bits of move_charge_at_immigrate has its own meaning about what type of
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616charges should be moved. But in any cases, it must be noted that an account of
617a page or a swap can be moved only when it is charged to the task's current(old)
618memory cgroup.
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619
620 bit | what type of charges would be moved ?
621 -----+------------------------------------------------------------------------
622 0 | A charge of an anonymous page(or swap of it) used by the target task.
623 | Those pages and swaps must be used only by the target task. You must
624 | enable Swap Extension(see 2.4) to enable move of swap charges.
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625 -----+------------------------------------------------------------------------
626 1 | A charge of file pages(normal file, tmpfs file(e.g. ipc shared memory)
dc10e281 627 | and swaps of tmpfs file) mmapped by the target task. Unlike the case of
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628 | anonymous pages, file pages(and swaps) in the range mmapped by the task
629 | will be moved even if the task hasn't done page fault, i.e. they might
630 | not be the task's "RSS", but other task's "RSS" that maps the same file.
631 | And mapcount of the page is ignored(the page can be moved even if
632 | page_mapcount(page) > 1). You must enable Swap Extension(see 2.4) to
633 | enable move of swap charges.
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634
6358.3 TODO
636
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637- Implement madvise(2) to let users decide the vma to be moved or not to be
638 moved.
639- All of moving charge operations are done under cgroup_mutex. It's not good
640 behavior to hold the mutex too long, so we may need some trick.
641
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6429. Memory thresholds
643
dc10e281 644Memory cgroup implements memory thresholds using cgroups notification
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645API (see cgroups.txt). It allows to register multiple memory and memsw
646thresholds and gets notifications when it crosses.
647
648To register a threshold application need:
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649- create an eventfd using eventfd(2);
650- open memory.usage_in_bytes or memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes;
651- write string like "<event_fd> <fd of memory.usage_in_bytes> <threshold>" to
652 cgroup.event_control.
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653
654Application will be notified through eventfd when memory usage crosses
655threshold in any direction.
656
657It's applicable for root and non-root cgroup.
658
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65910. OOM Control
660
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661memory.oom_control file is for OOM notification and other controls.
662
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663Memory cgroup implements OOM notifier using cgroup notification
664API (See cgroups.txt). It allows to register multiple OOM notification
665delivery and gets notification when OOM happens.
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666
667To register a notifier, application need:
668 - create an eventfd using eventfd(2)
669 - open memory.oom_control file
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670 - write string like "<event_fd> <fd of memory.oom_control>" to
671 cgroup.event_control
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dc10e281 673Application will be notified through eventfd when OOM happens.
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674OOM notification doesn't work for root cgroup.
675
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676You can disable OOM-killer by writing "1" to memory.oom_control file, as:
677
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678 #echo 1 > memory.oom_control
679
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680This operation is only allowed to the top cgroup of sub-hierarchy.
681If OOM-killer is disabled, tasks under cgroup will hang/sleep
682in memory cgroup's OOM-waitqueue when they request accountable memory.
3c11ecf4 683
dc10e281 684For running them, you have to relax the memory cgroup's OOM status by
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685 * enlarge limit or reduce usage.
686To reduce usage,
687 * kill some tasks.
688 * move some tasks to other group with account migration.
689 * remove some files (on tmpfs?)
690
691Then, stopped tasks will work again.
692
693At reading, current status of OOM is shown.
694 oom_kill_disable 0 or 1 (if 1, oom-killer is disabled)
dc10e281 695 under_oom 0 or 1 (if 1, the memory cgroup is under OOM, tasks may
3c11ecf4 696 be stopped.)
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697
69811. TODO
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699
7001. Add support for accounting huge pages (as a separate controller)
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7012. Make per-cgroup scanner reclaim not-shared pages first
7023. Teach controller to account for shared-pages
628f4235 7034. Start reclamation in the background when the limit is
1b6df3aa 704 not yet hit but the usage is getting closer
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705
706Summary
707
708Overall, the memory controller has been a stable controller and has been
709commented and discussed quite extensively in the community.
710
711References
712
7131. Singh, Balbir. RFC: Memory Controller, http://lwn.net/Articles/206697/
7142. Singh, Balbir. Memory Controller (RSS Control),
715 http://lwn.net/Articles/222762/
7163. Emelianov, Pavel. Resource controllers based on process cgroups
717 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/3/6/198
7184. Emelianov, Pavel. RSS controller based on process cgroups (v2)
2324c5dd 719 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/4/9/78
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7205. Emelianov, Pavel. RSS controller based on process cgroups (v3)
721 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/30/244
7226. Menage, Paul. Control Groups v10, http://lwn.net/Articles/236032/
7237. Vaidyanathan, Srinivasan, Control Groups: Pagecache accounting and control
724 subsystem (v3), http://lwn.net/Articles/235534/
2324c5dd 7258. Singh, Balbir. RSS controller v2 test results (lmbench),
1b6df3aa 726 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/17/232
2324c5dd 7279. Singh, Balbir. RSS controller v2 AIM9 results
1b6df3aa 728 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/18/1
2324c5dd 72910. Singh, Balbir. Memory controller v6 test results,
1b6df3aa 730 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/19/36
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73111. Singh, Balbir. Memory controller introduction (v6),
732 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/17/69
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73312. Corbet, Jonathan, Controlling memory use in cgroups,
734 http://lwn.net/Articles/243795/
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