Skip to content
Snippets Groups Projects
memory.rst 39.7 KiB
Newer Older
  • Learn to ignore specific revisions
  • Memory Resource Controller
    
    NOTE:
          This document is hopelessly outdated and it asks for a complete
    
          rewrite. It still contains a useful information so we are keeping it
          here but make sure to check the current code if you need a deeper
          understanding.
    
    
    NOTE:
          The Memory Resource Controller has generically been referred to as the
    
          memory controller in this document. Do not confuse memory controller
          used here with the memory controller that is used in hardware.
    
    (For editors) In this document:
    
          When we mention a cgroup (cgroupfs's directory) with memory controller,
          we call it "memory cgroup". When you see git-log and source code, you'll
          see patch's title and function names tend to use "memcg".
          In this document, we avoid using it.
    
    
    Benefits and Purpose of the memory controller
    
    =============================================
    
    
    The memory controller isolates the memory behaviour of a group of tasks
    from the rest of the system. The article on LWN [12] mentions some probable
    uses of the memory controller. The memory controller can be used to
    
    a. Isolate an application or a group of applications
    
       Memory-hungry applications can be isolated and limited to a smaller
    
       amount of memory.
    
    b. Create a cgroup with a limited amount of memory; this can be used
    
       as a good alternative to booting with mem=XXXX.
    c. Virtualization solutions can control the amount of memory they want
       to assign to a virtual machine instance.
    d. A CD/DVD burner could control the amount of memory used by the
       rest of the system to ensure that burning does not fail due to lack
       of available memory.
    
    e. There are several other use cases; find one or use the controller just
    
       for fun (to learn and hack on the VM subsystem).
    
    
    Current Status: linux-2.6.34-mmotm(development version of 2010/April)
    
    Features:
    
     - accounting anonymous pages, file caches, swap caches usage and limiting them.
    
     - pages are linked to per-memcg LRU exclusively, and there is no global LRU.
    
     - optionally, memory+swap usage can be accounted and limited.
     - hierarchical accounting
     - soft limit
    
     - moving (recharging) account at moving a task is selectable.
    
     - usage threshold notifier
    
     - memory pressure notifier
    
     - oom-killer disable knob and oom-notifier
     - Root cgroup has no limit controls.
    
    
     Kernel memory support is a work in progress, and the current version provides
    
     basically functionality. (See Section 2.7)
    
    
    Brief summary of control files.
    
    
    ==================================== ==========================================
     tasks				     attach a task(thread) and show list of
    				     threads
     cgroup.procs			     show list of processes
     cgroup.event_control		     an interface for event_fd()
     memory.usage_in_bytes		     show current usage for memory
    				     (See 5.5 for details)
     memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes	     show current usage for memory+Swap
    				     (See 5.5 for details)
     memory.limit_in_bytes		     set/show limit of memory usage
     memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes	     set/show limit of memory+Swap usage
     memory.failcnt			     show the number of memory usage hits limits
     memory.memsw.failcnt		     show the number of memory+Swap hits limits
     memory.max_usage_in_bytes	     show max memory usage recorded
     memory.memsw.max_usage_in_bytes     show max memory+Swap usage recorded
     memory.soft_limit_in_bytes	     set/show soft limit of memory usage
     memory.stat			     show various statistics
     memory.use_hierarchy		     set/show hierarchical account enabled
     memory.force_empty		     trigger forced page reclaim
     memory.pressure_level		     set memory pressure notifications
     memory.swappiness		     set/show swappiness parameter of vmscan
    				     (See sysctl's vm.swappiness)
     memory.move_charge_at_immigrate     set/show controls of moving charges
    
                                         This knob is deprecated and shouldn't be
                                         used.
    
     memory.oom_control		     set/show oom controls.
     memory.numa_stat		     show the number of memory usage per numa
    				     node
     memory.kmem.limit_in_bytes          set/show hard limit for kernel memory
    
                                         This knob is deprecated and shouldn't be
                                         used. It is planned that this be removed in
                                         the foreseeable future.
    
     memory.kmem.usage_in_bytes          show current kernel memory allocation
     memory.kmem.failcnt                 show the number of kernel memory usage
    				     hits limits
     memory.kmem.max_usage_in_bytes      show max kernel memory usage recorded
    
     memory.kmem.tcp.limit_in_bytes      set/show hard limit for tcp buf memory
     memory.kmem.tcp.usage_in_bytes      show current tcp buf memory allocation
     memory.kmem.tcp.failcnt             show the number of tcp buf memory usage
    				     hits limits
     memory.kmem.tcp.max_usage_in_bytes  show max tcp buf memory usage recorded
    ==================================== ==========================================
    
    1. History
    
    
    The memory controller has a long history. A request for comments for the memory
    controller was posted by Balbir Singh [1]. At the time the RFC was posted
    there were several implementations for memory control. The goal of the
    RFC was to build consensus and agreement for the minimal features required
    for memory control. The first RSS controller was posted by Balbir Singh[2]
    in Feb 2007. Pavel Emelianov [3][4][5] has since posted three versions of the
    RSS controller. At OLS, at the resource management BoF, everyone suggested
    that we handle both page cache and RSS together. Another request was raised
    to allow user space handling of OOM. The current memory controller is
    at version 6; it combines both mapped (RSS) and unmapped Page
    Cache Control [11].
    
    2. Memory Control
    
    
    Memory is a unique resource in the sense that it is present in a limited
    amount. If a task requires a lot of CPU processing, the task can spread
    its processing over a period of hours, days, months or years, but with
    memory, the same physical memory needs to be reused to accomplish the task.
    
    The memory controller implementation has been divided into phases. These
    are:
    
    1. Memory controller
    2. mlock(2) controller
    3. Kernel user memory accounting and slab control
    4. user mappings length controller
    
    The memory controller is the first controller developed.
    
    2.1. Design
    
    The core of the design is a counter called the page_counter. The
    page_counter tracks the current memory usage and limit of the group of
    processes associated with the controller. Each cgroup has a memory controller
    specific data structure (mem_cgroup) associated with it.
    
    
    2.2. Accounting
    
    
    		+--------------------+
    
    		|  mem_cgroup        |
    		|  (page_counter)    |
    
    		+--------------------+
    		 /            ^      \
    		/             |       \
               +---------------+  |        +---------------+
               | mm_struct     |  |....    | mm_struct     |
               |               |  |        |               |
               +---------------+  |        +---------------+
                                  |
                                  + --------------+
                                                  |
               +---------------+           +------+--------+
               | page          +---------->  page_cgroup|
               |               |           |               |
               +---------------+           +---------------+
    
                 (Figure 1: Hierarchy of Accounting)
    
    
    Figure 1 shows the important aspects of the controller
    
    1. Accounting happens per cgroup
    2. Each mm_struct knows about which cgroup it belongs to
    3. Each page has a pointer to the page_cgroup, which in turn knows the
       cgroup it belongs to
    
    
    The accounting is done as follows: mem_cgroup_charge_common() is invoked to
    set up the necessary data structures and check if the cgroup that is being
    charged is over its limit. If it is, then reclaim is invoked on the cgroup.
    
    More details can be found in the reclaim section of this document.
    If everything goes well, a page meta-data-structure called page_cgroup is
    
    updated. page_cgroup has its own LRU on cgroup.
    (*) page_cgroup structure is allocated at boot/memory-hotplug time.
    
    
    2.2.1 Accounting details
    
    All mapped anon pages (RSS) and cache pages (Page Cache) are accounted.
    
    Some pages which are never reclaimable and will not be on the LRU
    
    are not accounted. We just account pages under usual VM management.
    
    
    RSS pages are accounted at page_fault unless they've already been accounted
    for earlier. A file page will be accounted for as Page Cache when it's
    inserted into inode (radix-tree). While it's mapped into the page tables of
    processes, duplicate accounting is carefully avoided.
    
    
    An RSS page is unaccounted when it's fully unmapped. A PageCache page is
    
    unaccounted when it's removed from radix-tree. Even if RSS pages are fully
    unmapped (by kswapd), they may exist as SwapCache in the system until they
    
    are really freed. Such SwapCaches are also accounted.
    
    A swapped-in page is not accounted until it's mapped.
    
    
    Note: The kernel does swapin-readahead and reads multiple swaps at once.
    
    This means swapped-in pages may contain pages for other tasks than a task
    causing page fault. So, we avoid accounting at swap-in I/O.
    
    
    At page migration, accounting information is kept.
    
    
    Note: we just account pages-on-LRU because our purpose is to control amount
    of used pages; not-on-LRU pages tend to be out-of-control from VM view.
    
    
    2.3 Shared Page Accounting
    
    
    Shared pages are accounted on the basis of the first touch approach. The
    cgroup that first touches a page is accounted for the page. The principle
    behind this approach is that a cgroup that aggressively uses a shared
    page will eventually get charged for it (once it is uncharged from
    the cgroup that brought it in -- this will happen on memory pressure).
    
    
    But see section 8.2: when moving a task to another cgroup, its pages may
    be recharged to the new cgroup, if move_charge_at_immigrate has been chosen.
    
    
    Exception: If CONFIG_MEMCG_SWAP is not used.
    
    When you do swapoff and make swapped-out pages of shmem(tmpfs) to
    
    be backed into memory in force, charges for pages are accounted against the
    caller of swapoff rather than the users of shmem.
    
    
    2.4 Swap Extension (CONFIG_MEMCG_SWAP)
    
    --------------------------------------
    
    Swap Extension allows you to record charge for swap. A swapped-in page is
    charged back to original page allocator if possible.
    
    When swap is accounted, following files are added.
    
     - memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes.
     - memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes.
    
    
    memsw means memory+swap. Usage of memory+swap is limited by
    memsw.limit_in_bytes.
    
    Example: Assume a system with 4G of swap. A task which allocates 6G of memory
    (by mistake) under 2G memory limitation will use all swap.
    In this case, setting memsw.limit_in_bytes=3G will prevent bad use of swap.
    
    By using the memsw limit, you can avoid system OOM which can be caused by swap
    
    shortage.
    
    **why 'memory+swap' rather than swap**
    
    
    The global LRU(kswapd) can swap out arbitrary pages. Swap-out means
    to move account from memory to swap...there is no change in usage of
    
    memory+swap. In other words, when we want to limit the usage of swap without
    affecting global LRU, memory+swap limit is better than just limiting swap from
    
    **What happens when a cgroup hits memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes**
    
    
    When a cgroup hits memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes, it's useless to do swap-out
    
    in this cgroup. Then, swap-out will not be done by cgroup routine and file
    caches are dropped. But as mentioned above, global LRU can do swapout memory
    from it for sanity of the system's memory management state. You can't forbid
    it by cgroup.
    
    Each cgroup maintains a per cgroup LRU which has the same structure as
    global VM. When a cgroup goes over its limit, we first try
    
    to reclaim memory from the cgroup so as to make space for the new
    pages that the cgroup has touched. If the reclaim is unsuccessful,
    an OOM routine is invoked to select and kill the bulkiest task in the
    
    cgroup. (See 10. OOM Control below.)
    
    
    The reclaim algorithm has not been modified for cgroups, except that
    
    pages that are selected for reclaiming come from the per-cgroup LRU
    
    NOTE:
      Reclaim does not work for the root cgroup, since we cannot set any
      limits on the root cgroup.
    
    Note2:
      When panic_on_oom is set to "2", the whole system will panic.
    
    KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki's avatar
    KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki committed
    When oom event notifier is registered, event will be delivered.
    (See oom_control section)
    
    
    2.6 Locking
    
       lock_page_cgroup()/unlock_page_cgroup() should not be called under
    
    Matthew Wilcox's avatar
    Matthew Wilcox committed
       the i_pages lock.
    
       Other lock order is following:
    
       PG_locked.
    
         mm->page_table_lock
             pgdat->lru_lock
    	   lock_page_cgroup.
    
    
      In many cases, just lock_page_cgroup() is called.
    
      per-zone-per-cgroup LRU (cgroup's private LRU) is just guarded by
    
      pgdat->lru_lock, it has no lock of its own.
    
    2.7 Kernel Memory Extension (CONFIG_MEMCG_KMEM)
    
    -----------------------------------------------
    
    
    With the Kernel memory extension, the Memory Controller is able to limit
    the amount of kernel memory used by the system. Kernel memory is fundamentally
    different than user memory, since it can't be swapped out, which makes it
    possible to DoS the system by consuming too much of this precious resource.
    
    
    Kernel memory accounting is enabled for all memory cgroups by default. But
    it can be disabled system-wide by passing cgroup.memory=nokmem to the kernel
    at boot time. In this case, kernel memory will not be accounted at all.
    
    Kernel memory limits are not imposed for the root cgroup. Usage for the root
    
    cgroup may or may not be accounted. The memory used is accumulated into
    memory.kmem.usage_in_bytes, or in a separate counter when it makes sense.
    (currently only for tcp).
    
    The main "kmem" counter is fed into the main counter, so kmem charges will
    also be visible from the user counter.
    
    
    Currently no soft limit is implemented for kernel memory. It is future work
    to trigger slab reclaim when those limits are reached.
    
    2.7.1 Current Kernel Memory resources accounted
    
    -----------------------------------------------
    
    stack pages:
      every process consumes some stack pages. By accounting into
      kernel memory, we prevent new processes from being created when the kernel
      memory usage is too high.
    
    slab pages:
      pages allocated by the SLAB or SLUB allocator are tracked. A copy
      of each kmem_cache is created every time the cache is touched by the first time
      from inside the memcg. The creation is done lazily, so some objects can still be
      skipped while the cache is being created. All objects in a slab page should
      belong to the same memcg. This only fails to hold when a task is migrated to a
      different memcg during the page allocation by the cache.
    
    sockets memory pressure:
      some sockets protocols have memory pressure
      thresholds. The Memory Controller allows them to be controlled individually
      per cgroup, instead of globally.
    
    tcp memory pressure:
      sockets memory pressure for the tcp protocol.
    
    
    Because the "kmem" counter is fed to the main user counter, kernel memory can
    never be limited completely independently of user memory. Say "U" is the user
    limit, and "K" the kernel limit. There are three possible ways limits can be
    set:
    
    
        This is the standard memcg limitation mechanism already present before kmem
        accounting. Kernel memory is completely ignored.
    
    
        Kernel memory is a subset of the user memory. This setup is useful in
        deployments where the total amount of memory per-cgroup is overcommited.
        Overcommiting kernel memory limits is definitely not recommended, since the
        box can still run out of non-reclaimable memory.
        In this case, the admin could set up K so that the sum of all groups is
        never greater than the total memory, and freely set U at the cost of his
        QoS.
    
    
    WARNING:
        In the current implementation, memory reclaim will NOT be
    
        triggered for a cgroup when it hits K while staying below U, which makes
        this setup impractical.
    
        Since kmem charges will also be fed to the user counter and reclaim will be
        triggered for the cgroup for both kinds of memory. This setup gives the
        admin a unified view of memory, and it is also useful for people who just
        want to track kernel memory usage.
    
    
    3. User Interface
    
    
    a. Enable CONFIG_CGROUPS
    
    b. Enable CONFIG_MEMCG
    c. Enable CONFIG_MEMCG_SWAP (to use swap extension)
    
    d. Enable CONFIG_MEMCG_KMEM (to use kmem extension)
    
    3.1. Prepare the cgroups (see cgroups.txt, Why are cgroups needed?)
    
    -------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    ::
    
    	# mount -t tmpfs none /sys/fs/cgroup
    	# mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/memory
    	# mount -t cgroup none /sys/fs/cgroup/memory -o memory
    
    3.2. Make the new group and move bash into it::
    
    	# mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0
    	# echo $$ > /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0/tasks
    
    Since now we're in the 0 cgroup, we can alter the memory limit::
    
    	# echo 4M > /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0/memory.limit_in_bytes
    
    NOTE:
      We can use a suffix (k, K, m, M, g or G) to indicate values in kilo,
      mega or gigabytes. (Here, Kilo, Mega, Giga are Kibibytes, Mebibytes,
      Gibibytes.)
    
    NOTE:
      We can write "-1" to reset the ``*.limit_in_bytes(unlimited)``.
    
    NOTE:
      We cannot set limits on the root cgroup any more.
    
    ::
    
      # cat /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0/memory.limit_in_bytes
      4194304
    
    We can check the usage::
    
      # cat /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0/memory.usage_in_bytes
      1216512
    
    A successful write to this file does not guarantee a successful setting of
    
    this limit to the value written into the file. This can be due to a
    
    number of factors, such as rounding up to page boundaries or the total
    
    availability of memory on the system. The user is required to re-read
    
    this file after a write to guarantee the value committed by the kernel::
    
      # echo 1 > memory.limit_in_bytes
      # cat memory.limit_in_bytes
      4096
    
    
    The memory.failcnt field gives the number of times that the cgroup limit was
    exceeded.
    
    
    The memory.stat file gives accounting information. Now, the number of
    caches, RSS and Active pages/Inactive pages are shown.
    
    
    4. Testing
    
    For testing features and implementation, see memcg_test.txt.
    
    Performance test is also important. To see pure memory controller's overhead,
    testing on tmpfs will give you good numbers of small overheads.
    Example: do kernel make on tmpfs.
    
    Page-fault scalability is also important. At measuring parallel
    page fault test, multi-process test may be better than multi-thread
    test because it has noise of shared objects/status.
    
    But the above two are testing extreme situations.
    Trying usual test under memory controller is always helpful.
    
    
    4.1 Troubleshooting
    
    
    Sometimes a user might find that the application under a cgroup is
    
    terminated by the OOM killer. There are several causes for this:
    
    
    1. The cgroup limit is too low (just too low to do anything useful)
    2. The user is using anonymous memory and swap is turned off or too low
    
    A sync followed by echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches will help get rid of
    some of the pages cached in the cgroup (page cache pages).
    
    
    To know what happens, disabling OOM_Kill as per "10. OOM Control" (below) and
    
    seeing what happens will be helpful.
    
    
    4.2 Task migration
    
    When a task migrates from one cgroup to another, its charge is not
    
    carried forward by default. The pages allocated from the original cgroup still
    
    remain charged to it, the charge is dropped when the page is freed or
    reclaimed.
    
    
    You can move charges of a task along with task migration.
    See 8. "Move charges at task migration"
    
    4.3 Removing a cgroup
    
    
    A cgroup can be removed by rmdir, but as discussed in sections 4.1 and 4.2, a
    cgroup might have some charge associated with it, even though all
    
    tasks have migrated away from it. (because we charge against pages, not
    against tasks.)
    
    
    We move the stats to root (if use_hierarchy==0) or parent (if
    use_hierarchy==1), and no change on the charge except uncharging
    from the child.
    
    Charges recorded in swap information is not updated at removal of cgroup.
    Recorded information is discarded and a cgroup which uses swap (swapcache)
    will be charged as a new owner of it.
    
    
    About use_hierarchy, see Section 6.
    
    5. Misc. interfaces
    ===================
    
      memory.force_empty interface is provided to make cgroup's memory usage empty.
    
      When writing anything to this::
    
      the cgroup will be reclaimed and as many pages reclaimed as possible.
    
      The typical use case for this interface is before calling rmdir().
    
      Though rmdir() offlines memcg, but the memcg may still stay there due to
      charged file caches. Some out-of-use page caches may keep charged until
      memory pressure happens. If you want to avoid that, force_empty will be useful.
    
      Also, note that when memory.kmem.limit_in_bytes is set the charges due to
      kernel pages will still be seen. This is not considered a failure and the
      write will still return success. In this case, it is expected that
      memory.kmem.usage_in_bytes == memory.usage_in_bytes.
    
    
      About use_hierarchy, see Section 6.
    
    
    5.2 stat file
    
    memory.stat file includes following statistics
    
    per-memory cgroup local status
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    
    =============== ===============================================================
    cache		# of bytes of page cache memory.
    rss		# of bytes of anonymous and swap cache memory (includes
    
    		transparent hugepages).
    
    rss_huge	# of bytes of anonymous transparent hugepages.
    mapped_file	# of bytes of mapped file (includes tmpfs/shmem)
    pgpgin		# of charging events to the memory cgroup. The charging
    
    		event happens each time a page is accounted as either mapped
    		anon page(RSS) or cache page(Page Cache) to the cgroup.
    
    pgpgout		# of uncharging events to the memory cgroup. The uncharging
    
    		event happens each time a page is unaccounted from the cgroup.
    
    swap		# of bytes of swap usage
    dirty		# of bytes that are waiting to get written back to the disk.
    writeback	# of bytes of file/anon cache that are queued for syncing to
    
    inactive_anon	# of bytes of anonymous and swap cache memory on inactive
    
    		LRU list.
    
    active_anon	# of bytes of anonymous and swap cache memory on active
    
    inactive_file	# of bytes of file-backed memory on inactive LRU list.
    active_file	# of bytes of file-backed memory on active LRU list.
    unevictable	# of bytes of memory that cannot be reclaimed (mlocked etc).
    =============== ===============================================================
    
    status considering hierarchy (see memory.use_hierarchy settings)
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    
    ========================= ===================================================
    hierarchical_memory_limit # of bytes of memory limit with regard to hierarchy
    			  under which the memory cgroup is
    hierarchical_memsw_limit  # of bytes of memory+swap limit with regard to
    			  hierarchy under which memory cgroup is.
    
    total_<counter>		  # hierarchical version of <counter>, which in
    			  addition to the cgroup's own value includes the
    			  sum of all hierarchical children's values of
    			  <counter>, i.e. total_cache
    ========================= ===================================================
    
    The following additional stats are dependent on CONFIG_DEBUG_VM
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    
    ========================= ========================================
    recent_rotated_anon	  VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
    recent_rotated_file	  VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
    recent_scanned_anon	  VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
    recent_scanned_file	  VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
    ========================= ========================================
    
    	recent_rotated means recent frequency of LRU rotation.
    	recent_scanned means recent # of scans to LRU.
    
    	showing for better debug please see the code for meanings.
    
    
    Bharata B Rao's avatar
    Bharata B Rao committed
    Note:
    	Only anonymous and swap cache memory is listed as part of 'rss' stat.
    	This should not be confused with the true 'resident set size' or the
    
    	amount of physical memory used by the cgroup.
    
    	'rss + mapped_file" will give you resident set size of cgroup.
    
    	(Note: file and shmem may be shared among other cgroups. In that case,
    
    	mapped_file is accounted only when the memory cgroup is owner of page
    	cache.)
    
    KOSAKI Motohiro's avatar
    KOSAKI Motohiro committed
    5.3 swappiness
    
    KOSAKI Motohiro's avatar
    KOSAKI Motohiro committed
    
    
    Overrides /proc/sys/vm/swappiness for the particular group. The tunable
    in the root cgroup corresponds to the global swappiness setting.
    
    Please note that unlike during the global reclaim, limit reclaim
    enforces that 0 swappiness really prevents from any swapping even if
    there is a swap storage available. This might lead to memcg OOM killer
    if there are no file pages to reclaim.
    
    KOSAKI Motohiro's avatar
    KOSAKI Motohiro committed
    
    
    5.4 failcnt
    
    
    A memory cgroup provides memory.failcnt and memory.memsw.failcnt files.
    This failcnt(== failure count) shows the number of times that a usage counter
    hit its limit. When a memory cgroup hits a limit, failcnt increases and
    memory under it will be reclaimed.
    
    
    You can reset failcnt by writing 0 to failcnt file::
    
    	# echo 0 > .../memory.failcnt
    
    KOSAKI Motohiro's avatar
    KOSAKI Motohiro committed
    
    
    
    For efficiency, as other kernel components, memory cgroup uses some optimization
    to avoid unnecessary cacheline false sharing. usage_in_bytes is affected by the
    
    method and doesn't show 'exact' value of memory (and swap) usage, it's a fuzz
    
    value for efficient access. (Of course, when necessary, it's synchronized.)
    If you want to know more exact memory usage, you should use RSS+CACHE(+SWAP)
    value in memory.stat(see 5.2).
    
    
    
    This is similar to numa_maps but operates on a per-memcg basis.  This is
    useful for providing visibility into the numa locality information within
    an memcg since the pages are allowed to be allocated from any physical
    
    node.  One of the use cases is evaluating application performance by
    combining this information with the application's CPU allocation.
    
    Each memcg's numa_stat file includes "total", "file", "anon" and "unevictable"
    per-node page counts including "hierarchical_<counter>" which sums up all
    hierarchical children's values in addition to the memcg's own value.
    
    
    The output format of memory.numa_stat is::
    
      total=<total pages> N0=<node 0 pages> N1=<node 1 pages> ...
      file=<total file pages> N0=<node 0 pages> N1=<node 1 pages> ...
      anon=<total anon pages> N0=<node 0 pages> N1=<node 1 pages> ...
      unevictable=<total anon pages> N0=<node 0 pages> N1=<node 1 pages> ...
      hierarchical_<counter>=<counter pages> N0=<node 0 pages> N1=<node 1 pages> ...
    
    The "total" count is sum of file + anon + unevictable.
    
    6. Hierarchy support
    
    The memory controller supports a deep hierarchy and hierarchical accounting.
    The hierarchy is created by creating the appropriate cgroups in the
    cgroup filesystem. Consider for example, the following cgroup filesystem
    
    
    In the diagram above, with hierarchical accounting enabled, all memory
    usage of e, is accounted to its ancestors up until the root (i.e, c and root),
    
    that has memory.use_hierarchy enabled. If one of the ancestors goes over its
    
    limit, the reclaim algorithm reclaims from the tasks in the ancestor and the
    children of the ancestor.
    
    6.1 Enabling hierarchical accounting and reclaim
    
    ------------------------------------------------
    
    A memory cgroup by default disables the hierarchy feature. Support
    
    can be enabled by writing 1 to memory.use_hierarchy file of the root cgroup::
    
    	# echo 1 > memory.use_hierarchy
    
    The feature can be disabled by::
    
    	# echo 0 > memory.use_hierarchy
    
    NOTE1:
           Enabling/disabling will fail if either the cgroup already has other
    
           cgroups created below it, or if the parent cgroup has use_hierarchy
           enabled.
    
    NOTE2:
           When panic_on_oom is set to "2", the whole system will panic in
    
           case of an OOM event in any cgroup.
    
    
    Soft limits allow for greater sharing of memory. The idea behind soft limits
    is to allow control groups to use as much of the memory as needed, provided
    
    a. There is no memory contention
    b. They do not exceed their hard limit
    
    
    When the system detects memory contention or low memory, control groups
    
    are pushed back to their soft limits. If the soft limit of each control
    group is very high, they are pushed back as much as possible to make
    sure that one control group does not starve the others of memory.
    
    
    Please note that soft limits is a best-effort feature; it comes with
    
    no guarantees, but it does its best to make sure that when memory is
    heavily contended for, memory is allocated based on the soft limit
    
    hints/setup. Currently soft limit based reclaim is set up such that
    
    it gets invoked from balance_pgdat (kswapd).
    
    7.1 Interface
    
    
    Soft limits can be setup by using the following commands (in this example we
    
    assume a soft limit of 256 MiB)::
    
    	# echo 256M > memory.soft_limit_in_bytes
    
    If we want to change this to 1G, we can at any time use::
    
    	# echo 1G > memory.soft_limit_in_bytes
    
    NOTE1:
           Soft limits take effect over a long period of time, since they involve
    
           reclaiming memory for balancing between memory cgroups
    
    NOTE2:
           It is recommended to set the soft limit always below the hard limit,
    
           otherwise the hard limit will take precedence.
    
    
    8. Move charges at task migration (DEPRECATED!)
    ===============================================
    
    THIS IS DEPRECATED!
    
    It's expensive and unreliable! It's better practice to launch workload
    tasks directly from inside their target cgroup. Use dedicated workload
    cgroups to allow fine-grained policy adjustments without having to
    move physical pages between control domains.
    
    
    Users can move charges associated with a task along with task migration, that
    is, uncharge task's pages from the old cgroup and charge them to the new cgroup.
    
    This feature is not supported in !CONFIG_MMU environments because of lack of
    page tables.
    
    This feature is disabled by default. It can be enabled (and disabled again) by
    
    writing to memory.move_charge_at_immigrate of the destination cgroup.
    
    
    	# echo (some positive value) > memory.move_charge_at_immigrate
    
    Note:
          Each bits of move_charge_at_immigrate has its own meaning about what type
    
          of charges should be moved. See 8.2 for details.
    
    Note:
          Charges are moved only when you move mm->owner, in other words,
    
          a leader of a thread group.
    
    Note:
          If we cannot find enough space for the task in the destination cgroup, we
    
          try to make space by reclaiming memory. Task migration may fail if we
          cannot make enough space.
    
    Note:
          It can take several seconds if you move charges much.
    
    And if you want disable it again::
    
    	# echo 0 > memory.move_charge_at_immigrate
    
    8.2 Type of charges which can be moved
    
    --------------------------------------
    
    Each bit in move_charge_at_immigrate has its own meaning about what type of
    charges should be moved. But in any case, it must be noted that an account of
    a page or a swap can be moved only when it is charged to the task's current
    (old) memory cgroup.
    
    +---+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
    |bit| what type of charges would be moved ?                                    |
    +===+==========================================================================+
    | 0 | A charge of an anonymous page (or swap of it) used by the target task.   |
    |   | You must enable Swap Extension (see 2.4) to enable move of swap charges. |
    +---+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
    | 1 | A charge of file pages (normal file, tmpfs file (e.g. ipc shared memory) |
    |   | and swaps of tmpfs file) mmapped by the target task. Unlike the case of  |
    |   | anonymous pages, file pages (and swaps) in the range mmapped by the task |
    |   | will be moved even if the task hasn't done page fault, i.e. they might   |
    |   | not be the task's "RSS", but other task's "RSS" that maps the same file. |
    |   | And mapcount of the page is ignored (the page can be moved even if       |
    |   | page_mapcount(page) > 1). You must enable Swap Extension (see 2.4) to    |
    |   | enable move of swap charges.                                             |
    +---+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
    
    
    - All of moving charge operations are done under cgroup_mutex. It's not good
      behavior to hold the mutex too long, so we may need some trick.
    
    
    9. Memory thresholds
    
    Memory cgroup implements memory thresholds using the cgroups notification
    
    API (see cgroups.txt). It allows to register multiple memory and memsw
    thresholds and gets notifications when it crosses.
    
    
    To register a threshold, an application must:
    
    - create an eventfd using eventfd(2);
    - open memory.usage_in_bytes or memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes;
    - write string like "<event_fd> <fd of memory.usage_in_bytes> <threshold>" to
      cgroup.event_control.
    
    
    Application will be notified through eventfd when memory usage crosses
    threshold in any direction.
    
    It's applicable for root and non-root cgroup.
    
    
    KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki's avatar
    KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki committed
    10. OOM Control
    
    memory.oom_control file is for OOM notification and other controls.
    
    
    Memory cgroup implements OOM notifier using the cgroup notification
    
    API (See cgroups.txt). It allows to register multiple OOM notification
    delivery and gets notification when OOM happens.
    
    To register a notifier, an application must:
    
    KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki's avatar
    KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki committed
     - create an eventfd using eventfd(2)
     - open memory.oom_control file
    
     - write string like "<event_fd> <fd of memory.oom_control>" to
       cgroup.event_control
    
    The application will be notified through eventfd when OOM happens.
    OOM notification doesn't work for the root cgroup.
    
    You can disable the OOM-killer by writing "1" to memory.oom_control file, as:
    
    	#echo 1 > memory.oom_control
    
    
    If OOM-killer is disabled, tasks under cgroup will hang/sleep
    in memory cgroup's OOM-waitqueue when they request accountable memory.
    
    For running them, you have to relax the memory cgroup's OOM status by
    
    	* enlarge limit or reduce usage.
    
    To reduce usage,
    
    	* kill some tasks.
    	* move some tasks to other group with account migration.
    	* remove some files (on tmpfs?)
    
    Then, stopped tasks will work again.
    
    At reading, current status of OOM is shown.
    
    
    	- oom_kill_disable 0 or 1
    	  (if 1, oom-killer is disabled)
    	- under_oom	   0 or 1
    	  (if 1, the memory cgroup is under OOM, tasks may be stopped.)
    
    11. Memory Pressure
    
    
    The pressure level notifications can be used to monitor the memory
    allocation cost; based on the pressure, applications can implement
    different strategies of managing their memory resources. The pressure
    levels are defined as following:
    
    The "low" level means that the system is reclaiming memory for new
    allocations. Monitoring this reclaiming activity might be useful for
    maintaining cache level. Upon notification, the program (typically
    "Activity Manager") might analyze vmstat and act in advance (i.e.
    prematurely shutdown unimportant services).
    
    The "medium" level means that the system is experiencing medium memory
    pressure, the system might be making swap, paging out active file caches,
    etc. Upon this event applications may decide to further analyze
    vmstat/zoneinfo/memcg or internal memory usage statistics and free any
    resources that can be easily reconstructed or re-read from a disk.
    
    The "critical" level means that the system is actively thrashing, it is
    about to out of memory (OOM) or even the in-kernel OOM killer is on its
    way to trigger. Applications should do whatever they can to help the
    system. It might be too late to consult with vmstat or any other
    statistics, so it's advisable to take an immediate action.
    
    
    By default, events are propagated upward until the event is handled, i.e. the
    events are not pass-through. For example, you have three cgroups: A->B->C. Now
    you set up an event listener on cgroups A, B and C, and suppose group C
    experiences some pressure. In this situation, only group C will receive the
    notification, i.e. groups A and B will not receive it. This is done to avoid
    excessive "broadcasting" of messages, which disturbs the system and which is
    especially bad if we are low on memory or thrashing. Group B, will receive
    notification only if there are no event listers for group C.
    
    There are three optional modes that specify different propagation behavior:
    
     - "default": this is the default behavior specified above. This mode is the
       same as omitting the optional mode parameter, preserved by backwards
       compatibility.
    
     - "hierarchy": events always propagate up to the root, similar to the default
       behavior, except that propagation continues regardless of whether there are
       event listeners at each level, with the "hierarchy" mode. In the above
       example, groups A, B, and C will receive notification of memory pressure.
    
     - "local": events are pass-through, i.e. they only receive notifications when
       memory pressure is experienced in the memcg for which the notification is
       registered. In the above example, group C will receive notification if
       registered for "local" notification and the group experiences memory
       pressure. However, group B will never receive notification, regardless if
       there is an event listener for group C or not, if group B is registered for
       local notification.
    
    The level and event notification mode ("hierarchy" or "local", if necessary) are
    specified by a comma-delimited string, i.e. "low,hierarchy" specifies
    hierarchical, pass-through, notification for all ancestor memcgs. Notification
    that is the default, non pass-through behavior, does not specify a mode.
    "medium,local" specifies pass-through notification for the medium level.
    
    
    The file memory.pressure_level is only used to setup an eventfd. To
    register a notification, an application must:
    
    - create an eventfd using eventfd(2);
    - open memory.pressure_level;
    
    - write string as "<event_fd> <fd of memory.pressure_level> <level[,mode]>"
    
      to cgroup.event_control.
    
    Application will be notified through eventfd when memory pressure is at
    the specific level (or higher). Read/write operations to
    memory.pressure_level are no implemented.
    
    Test:
    
       Here is a small script example that makes a new cgroup, sets up a
       memory limit, sets up a notification in the cgroup and then makes child
    
       cgroup experience a critical pressure::
    
    	# cd /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/
    	# mkdir foo
    	# cd foo
    	# cgroup_event_listener memory.pressure_level low,hierarchy &
    	# echo 8000000 > memory.limit_in_bytes
    	# echo 8000000 > memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes
    	# echo $$ > tasks
    	# dd if=/dev/zero | read x
    
    
       (Expect a bunch of notifications, and eventually, the oom-killer will
       trigger.)
    
    12. TODO
    
    1. Make per-cgroup scanner reclaim not-shared pages first
    2. Teach controller to account for shared-pages
    3. Start reclamation in the background when the limit is
    
       not yet hit but the usage is getting closer
    
    Summary
    
    
    Overall, the memory controller has been a stable controller and has been
    commented and discussed quite extensively in the community.
    
    References
    
    
    1. Singh, Balbir. RFC: Memory Controller, http://lwn.net/Articles/206697/
    2. Singh, Balbir. Memory Controller (RSS Control),
       http://lwn.net/Articles/222762/
    3. Emelianov, Pavel. Resource controllers based on process cgroups
       http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/3/6/198
    4. Emelianov, Pavel. RSS controller based on process cgroups (v2)
    
       http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/4/9/78
    
    5. Emelianov, Pavel. RSS controller based on process cgroups (v3)