blob: b6ed61c958560d987e40cc28a9eca7f7d12401a1 [file] [log] [blame]
Balbir Singh00f0b822008-03-04 14:28:39 -08001Memory Resource Controller
2
3NOTE: The Memory Resource Controller has been generically been referred
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -07004 to as the memory controller in this document. Do not confuse memory
5 controller used here with the memory controller that is used in hardware.
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -08006
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -07007(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.
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -080013
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -080014Benefits 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
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -070033Current 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
47 Kernel memory and Hugepages are not under control yet. We just manage
48 pages on LRU. To add more controls, we have to take care of performance.
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()
55 memory.usage_in_bytes # show current memory(RSS+Cache) usage.
56 memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes # show current memory+Swap usage
57 memory.limit_in_bytes # set/show limit of memory usage
58 memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes # set/show limit of memory+Swap usage
59 memory.failcnt # show the number of memory usage hits limits
60 memory.memsw.failcnt # show the number of memory+Swap hits limits
61 memory.max_usage_in_bytes # show max memory usage recorded
62 memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes # show max memory+Swap usage recorded
63 memory.soft_limit_in_bytes # set/show soft limit of memory usage
64 memory.stat # show various statistics
65 memory.use_hierarchy # set/show hierarchical account enabled
66 memory.force_empty # trigger forced move charge to parent
67 memory.swappiness # set/show swappiness parameter of vmscan
68 (See sysctl's vm.swappiness)
69 memory.move_charge_at_immigrate # set/show controls of moving charges
70 memory.oom_control # set/show oom controls.
71
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800721. History
73
74The memory controller has a long history. A request for comments for the memory
75controller was posted by Balbir Singh [1]. At the time the RFC was posted
76there were several implementations for memory control. The goal of the
77RFC was to build consensus and agreement for the minimal features required
78for memory control. The first RSS controller was posted by Balbir Singh[2]
79in Feb 2007. Pavel Emelianov [3][4][5] has since posted three versions of the
80RSS controller. At OLS, at the resource management BoF, everyone suggested
81that we handle both page cache and RSS together. Another request was raised
82to allow user space handling of OOM. The current memory controller is
83at version 6; it combines both mapped (RSS) and unmapped Page
84Cache Control [11].
85
862. Memory Control
87
88Memory is a unique resource in the sense that it is present in a limited
89amount. If a task requires a lot of CPU processing, the task can spread
90its processing over a period of hours, days, months or years, but with
91memory, the same physical memory needs to be reused to accomplish the task.
92
93The memory controller implementation has been divided into phases. These
94are:
95
961. Memory controller
972. mlock(2) controller
983. Kernel user memory accounting and slab control
994. user mappings length controller
100
101The memory controller is the first controller developed.
102
1032.1. Design
104
105The core of the design is a counter called the res_counter. The res_counter
106tracks the current memory usage and limit of the group of processes associated
107with the controller. Each cgroup has a memory controller specific data
108structure (mem_cgroup) associated with it.
109
1102.2. Accounting
111
112 +--------------------+
113 | mem_cgroup |
114 | (res_counter) |
115 +--------------------+
116 / ^ \
117 / | \
118 +---------------+ | +---------------+
119 | mm_struct | |.... | mm_struct |
120 | | | | |
121 +---------------+ | +---------------+
122 |
123 + --------------+
124 |
125 +---------------+ +------+--------+
126 | page +----------> page_cgroup|
127 | | | |
128 +---------------+ +---------------+
129
130 (Figure 1: Hierarchy of Accounting)
131
132
133Figure 1 shows the important aspects of the controller
134
1351. Accounting happens per cgroup
1362. Each mm_struct knows about which cgroup it belongs to
1373. Each page has a pointer to the page_cgroup, which in turn knows the
138 cgroup it belongs to
139
140The accounting is done as follows: mem_cgroup_charge() is invoked to setup
141the necessary data structures and check if the cgroup that is being charged
142is over its limit. If it is then reclaim is invoked on the cgroup.
143More details can be found in the reclaim section of this document.
144If everything goes well, a page meta-data-structure called page_cgroup is
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700145updated. page_cgroup has its own LRU on cgroup.
146(*) page_cgroup structure is allocated at boot/memory-hotplug time.
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800147
1482.2.1 Accounting details
149
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki5b4e6552008-10-18 20:28:10 -0700150All mapped anon pages (RSS) and cache pages (Page Cache) are accounted.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700151Some pages which are never reclaimable and will not be on the global LRU
152are not accounted. We just account pages under usual VM management.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki5b4e6552008-10-18 20:28:10 -0700153
154RSS pages are accounted at page_fault unless they've already been accounted
155for earlier. A file page will be accounted for as Page Cache when it's
156inserted into inode (radix-tree). While it's mapped into the page tables of
157processes, duplicate accounting is carefully avoided.
158
159A RSS page is unaccounted when it's fully unmapped. A PageCache page is
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700160unaccounted when it's removed from radix-tree. Even if RSS pages are fully
161unmapped (by kswapd), they may exist as SwapCache in the system until they
162are really freed. Such SwapCaches also also accounted.
163A swapped-in page is not accounted until it's mapped.
164
165Note: The kernel does swapin-readahead and read multiple swaps at once.
166This means swapped-in pages may contain pages for other tasks than a task
167causing page fault. So, we avoid accounting at swap-in I/O.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki5b4e6552008-10-18 20:28:10 -0700168
169At page migration, accounting information is kept.
170
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700171Note: we just account pages-on-LRU because our purpose is to control amount
172of used pages; not-on-LRU pages tend to be out-of-control from VM view.
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800173
1742.3 Shared Page Accounting
175
176Shared pages are accounted on the basis of the first touch approach. The
177cgroup that first touches a page is accounted for the page. The principle
178behind this approach is that a cgroup that aggressively uses a shared
179page will eventually get charged for it (once it is uncharged from
180the cgroup that brought it in -- this will happen on memory pressure).
181
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki8c7c6e342009-01-07 18:08:00 -0800182Exception: If CONFIG_CGROUP_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR_SWAP is not used..
183When you do swapoff and make swapped-out pages of shmem(tmpfs) to
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukid13d1442009-01-07 18:07:56 -0800184be backed into memory in force, charges for pages are accounted against the
185caller of swapoff rather than the users of shmem.
186
187
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki8c7c6e342009-01-07 18:08:00 -08001882.4 Swap Extension (CONFIG_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR_SWAP)
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700189
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki8c7c6e342009-01-07 18:08:00 -0800190Swap Extension allows you to record charge for swap. A swapped-in page is
191charged back to original page allocator if possible.
192
193When swap is accounted, following files are added.
194 - memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes.
195 - memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes.
196
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700197memsw means memory+swap. Usage of memory+swap is limited by
198memsw.limit_in_bytes.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki8c7c6e342009-01-07 18:08:00 -0800199
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700200Example: Assume a system with 4G of swap. A task which allocates 6G of memory
201(by mistake) under 2G memory limitation will use all swap.
202In this case, setting memsw.limit_in_bytes=3G will prevent bad use of swap.
203By using memsw limit, you can avoid system OOM which can be caused by swap
204shortage.
205
206* why 'memory+swap' rather than swap.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki8c7c6e342009-01-07 18:08:00 -0800207The global LRU(kswapd) can swap out arbitrary pages. Swap-out means
208to move account from memory to swap...there is no change in usage of
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700209memory+swap. In other words, when we want to limit the usage of swap without
210affecting global LRU, memory+swap limit is better than just limiting swap from
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki22a668d2009-06-17 16:27:19 -0700211OS point of view.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki8c7c6e342009-01-07 18:08:00 -0800212
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki22a668d2009-06-17 16:27:19 -0700213* What happens when a cgroup hits memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes
214When a cgroup his memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes, it's useless to do swap-out
215in this cgroup. Then, swap-out will not be done by cgroup routine and file
216caches are dropped. But as mentioned above, global LRU can do swapout memory
217from it for sanity of the system's memory management state. You can't forbid
218it by cgroup.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki8c7c6e342009-01-07 18:08:00 -0800219
2202.5 Reclaim
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800221
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700222Each cgroup maintains a per cgroup LRU which has the same structure as
223global VM. When a cgroup goes over its limit, we first try
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800224to reclaim memory from the cgroup so as to make space for the new
225pages that the cgroup has touched. If the reclaim is unsuccessful,
226an OOM routine is invoked to select and kill the bulkiest task in the
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700227cgroup. (See 10. OOM Control below.)
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800228
229The reclaim algorithm has not been modified for cgroups, except that
230pages that are selected for reclaiming come from the per cgroup LRU
231list.
232
Balbir Singh4b3bde42009-09-23 15:56:32 -0700233NOTE: Reclaim does not work for the root cgroup, since we cannot set any
234limits on the root cgroup.
235
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidaaf1e62010-03-10 15:22:32 -0800236Note2: When panic_on_oom is set to "2", the whole system will panic.
237
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki9490ff22010-05-26 14:42:36 -0700238When oom event notifier is registered, event will be delivered.
239(See oom_control section)
240
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -07002412.6 Locking
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800242
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700243 lock_page_cgroup()/unlock_page_cgroup() should not be called under
244 mapping->tree_lock.
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800245
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700246 Other lock order is following:
247 PG_locked.
248 mm->page_table_lock
249 zone->lru_lock
250 lock_page_cgroup.
251 In many cases, just lock_page_cgroup() is called.
252 per-zone-per-cgroup LRU (cgroup's private LRU) is just guarded by
253 zone->lru_lock, it has no lock of its own.
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800254
2553. User Interface
256
2570. Configuration
258
259a. Enable CONFIG_CGROUPS
260b. Enable CONFIG_RESOURCE_COUNTERS
Balbir Singh00f0b822008-03-04 14:28:39 -0800261c. Enable CONFIG_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700262d. Enable CONFIG_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR_SWAP (to use swap extension)
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800263
2641. Prepare the cgroups
265# mkdir -p /cgroups
266# mount -t cgroup none /cgroups -o memory
267
2682. Make the new group and move bash into it
269# mkdir /cgroups/0
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700270# echo $$ > /cgroups/0/tasks
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800271
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700272Since now we're in the 0 cgroup, we can alter the memory limit:
Balbir Singhfb789222008-03-04 14:28:24 -0800273# echo 4M > /cgroups/0/memory.limit_in_bytes
Balbir Singh0eea1032008-02-07 00:13:57 -0800274
275NOTE: We can use a suffix (k, K, m, M, g or G) to indicate values in kilo,
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700276mega or gigabytes. (Here, Kilo, Mega, Giga are Kibibytes, Mebibytes, Gibibytes.)
277
Daisuke Nishimurac5b947b2009-06-17 16:27:20 -0700278NOTE: We can write "-1" to reset the *.limit_in_bytes(unlimited).
Balbir Singh4b3bde42009-09-23 15:56:32 -0700279NOTE: We cannot set limits on the root cgroup any more.
Balbir Singh0eea1032008-02-07 00:13:57 -0800280
281# cat /cgroups/0/memory.limit_in_bytes
Li Zefan2324c5d2008-02-23 15:24:12 -08002824194304
Balbir Singh0eea1032008-02-07 00:13:57 -0800283
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800284We can check the usage:
Balbir Singh0eea1032008-02-07 00:13:57 -0800285# cat /cgroups/0/memory.usage_in_bytes
Li Zefan2324c5d2008-02-23 15:24:12 -08002861216512
Balbir Singh0eea1032008-02-07 00:13:57 -0800287
288A successful write to this file does not guarantee a successful set of
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700289this limit to the value written into the file. This can be due to a
Balbir Singh0eea1032008-02-07 00:13:57 -0800290number of factors, such as rounding up to page boundaries or the total
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700291availability of memory on the system. The user is required to re-read
Balbir Singh0eea1032008-02-07 00:13:57 -0800292this file after a write to guarantee the value committed by the kernel.
293
Balbir Singhfb789222008-03-04 14:28:24 -0800294# echo 1 > memory.limit_in_bytes
Balbir Singh0eea1032008-02-07 00:13:57 -0800295# cat memory.limit_in_bytes
Li Zefan2324c5d2008-02-23 15:24:12 -08002964096
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800297
298The memory.failcnt field gives the number of times that the cgroup limit was
299exceeded.
300
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidfc05c22008-02-07 00:14:41 -0800301The memory.stat file gives accounting information. Now, the number of
302caches, RSS and Active pages/Inactive pages are shown.
303
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -08003044. Testing
305
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700306For testing features and implementation, see memcg_test.txt.
307
308Performance test is also important. To see pure memory controller's overhead,
309testing on tmpfs will give you good numbers of small overheads.
310Example: do kernel make on tmpfs.
311
312Page-fault scalability is also important. At measuring parallel
313page fault test, multi-process test may be better than multi-thread
314test because it has noise of shared objects/status.
315
316But the above two are testing extreme situations.
317Trying usual test under memory controller is always helpful.
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800318
3194.1 Troubleshooting
320
321Sometimes a user might find that the application under a cgroup is
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700322terminated by OOM killer. There are several causes for this:
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800323
3241. The cgroup limit is too low (just too low to do anything useful)
3252. The user is using anonymous memory and swap is turned off or too low
326
327A sync followed by echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches will help get rid of
328some of the pages cached in the cgroup (page cache pages).
329
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700330To know what happens, disable OOM_Kill by 10. OOM Control(see below) and
331seeing what happens will be helpful.
332
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -08003334.2 Task migration
334
Francis Galieguea33f3222010-04-23 00:08:02 +0200335When a task migrates from one cgroup to another, its charge is not
Daisuke Nishimura7dc74be2010-03-10 15:22:13 -0800336carried forward by default. The pages allocated from the original cgroup still
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800337remain charged to it, the charge is dropped when the page is freed or
338reclaimed.
339
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700340You can move charges of a task along with task migration.
341See 8. "Move charges at task migration"
Daisuke Nishimura7dc74be2010-03-10 15:22:13 -0800342
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -08003434.3 Removing a cgroup
344
345A cgroup can be removed by rmdir, but as discussed in sections 4.1 and 4.2, a
346cgroup might have some charge associated with it, even though all
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700347tasks have migrated away from it. (because we charge against pages, not
348against tasks.)
349
350Such charges are freed or moved to their parent. At moving, both of RSS
351and CACHES are moved to parent.
352rmdir() may return -EBUSY if freeing/moving fails. See 5.1 also.
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800353
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki8c7c6e342009-01-07 18:08:00 -0800354Charges recorded in swap information is not updated at removal of cgroup.
355Recorded information is discarded and a cgroup which uses swap (swapcache)
356will be charged as a new owner of it.
357
358
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukic1e862c2009-01-07 18:07:55 -08003595. Misc. interfaces.
360
3615.1 force_empty
362 memory.force_empty interface is provided to make cgroup's memory usage empty.
363 You can use this interface only when the cgroup has no tasks.
364 When writing anything to this
365
366 # echo 0 > memory.force_empty
367
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700368 Almost all pages tracked by this memory cgroup will be unmapped and freed.
369 Some pages cannot be freed because they are locked or in-use. Such pages are
370 moved to parent and this cgroup will be empty. This may return -EBUSY if
371 VM is too busy to free/move all pages immediately.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukic1e862c2009-01-07 18:07:55 -0800372
373 Typical use case of this interface is that calling this before rmdir().
374 Because rmdir() moves all pages to parent, some out-of-use page caches can be
375 moved to the parent. If you want to avoid that, force_empty will be useful.
376
KOSAKI Motohiro7f016ee2009-01-07 18:08:22 -08003775.2 stat file
KOSAKI Motohiro7f016ee2009-01-07 18:08:22 -0800378
Bharata B Raoc863d832009-04-13 14:40:15 -0700379memory.stat file includes following statistics
KOSAKI Motohiro7f016ee2009-01-07 18:08:22 -0800380
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700381# per-memory cgroup local status
Bharata B Raoc863d832009-04-13 14:40:15 -0700382cache - # of bytes of page cache memory.
383rss - # of bytes of anonymous and swap cache memory.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700384mapped_file - # of bytes of mapped file (includes tmpfs/shmem)
Bharata B Raoc863d832009-04-13 14:40:15 -0700385pgpgin - # of pages paged in (equivalent to # of charging events).
386pgpgout - # of pages paged out (equivalent to # of uncharging events).
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700387swap - # of bytes of swap usage
Bharata B Raoc863d832009-04-13 14:40:15 -0700388inactive_anon - # of bytes of anonymous memory and swap cache memory on
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700389 LRU list.
390active_anon - # of bytes of anonymous and swap cache memory on active
391 inactive LRU list.
392inactive_file - # of bytes of file-backed memory on inactive LRU list.
393active_file - # of bytes of file-backed memory on active LRU list.
Bharata B Raoc863d832009-04-13 14:40:15 -0700394unevictable - # of bytes of memory that cannot be reclaimed (mlocked etc).
395
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700396# status considering hierarchy (see memory.use_hierarchy settings)
397
398hierarchical_memory_limit - # of bytes of memory limit with regard to hierarchy
399 under which the memory cgroup is
400hierarchical_memsw_limit - # of bytes of memory+swap limit with regard to
401 hierarchy under which memory cgroup is.
402
403total_cache - sum of all children's "cache"
404total_rss - sum of all children's "rss"
405total_mapped_file - sum of all children's "cache"
406total_pgpgin - sum of all children's "pgpgin"
407total_pgpgout - sum of all children's "pgpgout"
408total_swap - sum of all children's "swap"
409total_inactive_anon - sum of all children's "inactive_anon"
410total_active_anon - sum of all children's "active_anon"
411total_inactive_file - sum of all children's "inactive_file"
412total_active_file - sum of all children's "active_file"
413total_unevictable - sum of all children's "unevictable"
414
415# The following additional stats are dependent on CONFIG_DEBUG_VM.
Bharata B Raoc863d832009-04-13 14:40:15 -0700416
417inactive_ratio - VM internal parameter. (see mm/page_alloc.c)
418recent_rotated_anon - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
419recent_rotated_file - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
420recent_scanned_anon - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
421recent_scanned_file - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
422
423Memo:
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700424 recent_rotated means recent frequency of LRU rotation.
425 recent_scanned means recent # of scans to LRU.
KOSAKI Motohiro7f016ee2009-01-07 18:08:22 -0800426 showing for better debug please see the code for meanings.
427
Bharata B Raoc863d832009-04-13 14:40:15 -0700428Note:
429 Only anonymous and swap cache memory is listed as part of 'rss' stat.
430 This should not be confused with the true 'resident set size' or the
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700431 amount of physical memory used by the cgroup.
432 'rss + file_mapped" will give you resident set size of cgroup.
433 (Note: file and shmem may be shared among other cgroups. In that case,
434 file_mapped is accounted only when the memory cgroup is owner of page
435 cache.)
KOSAKI Motohiro7f016ee2009-01-07 18:08:22 -0800436
KOSAKI Motohiroa7885eb2009-01-07 18:08:24 -08004375.3 swappiness
KOSAKI Motohiroa7885eb2009-01-07 18:08:24 -0800438
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700439Similar to /proc/sys/vm/swappiness, but affecting a hierarchy of groups only.
KOSAKI Motohiroa7885eb2009-01-07 18:08:24 -0800440
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700441Following cgroups' swappiness can't be changed.
442- root cgroup (uses /proc/sys/vm/swappiness).
443- a cgroup which uses hierarchy and it has other cgroup(s) below it.
444- a cgroup which uses hierarchy and not the root of hierarchy.
445
4465.4 failcnt
447
448A memory cgroup provides memory.failcnt and memory.memsw.failcnt files.
449This failcnt(== failure count) shows the number of times that a usage counter
450hit its limit. When a memory cgroup hits a limit, failcnt increases and
451memory under it will be reclaimed.
452
453You can reset failcnt by writing 0 to failcnt file.
454# echo 0 > .../memory.failcnt
KOSAKI Motohiroa7885eb2009-01-07 18:08:24 -0800455
Balbir Singh52bc0d82009-01-07 18:08:03 -08004566. Hierarchy support
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukic1e862c2009-01-07 18:07:55 -0800457
Balbir Singh52bc0d82009-01-07 18:08:03 -0800458The memory controller supports a deep hierarchy and hierarchical accounting.
459The hierarchy is created by creating the appropriate cgroups in the
460cgroup filesystem. Consider for example, the following cgroup filesystem
461hierarchy
462
463 root
464 / | \
465 / | \
466 a b c
467 | \
468 | \
469 d e
470
471In the diagram above, with hierarchical accounting enabled, all memory
472usage of e, is accounted to its ancestors up until the root (i.e, c and root),
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700473that has memory.use_hierarchy enabled. If one of the ancestors goes over its
Balbir Singh52bc0d82009-01-07 18:08:03 -0800474limit, the reclaim algorithm reclaims from the tasks in the ancestor and the
475children of the ancestor.
476
4776.1 Enabling hierarchical accounting and reclaim
478
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700479A memory cgroup by default disables the hierarchy feature. Support
Balbir Singh52bc0d82009-01-07 18:08:03 -0800480can be enabled by writing 1 to memory.use_hierarchy file of the root cgroup
481
482# echo 1 > memory.use_hierarchy
483
484The feature can be disabled by
485
486# echo 0 > memory.use_hierarchy
487
Greg Thelen689bca32011-02-16 17:51:23 -0800488NOTE1: Enabling/disabling will fail if either the cgroup already has other
489 cgroups created below it, or if the parent cgroup has use_hierarchy
490 enabled.
Balbir Singh52bc0d82009-01-07 18:08:03 -0800491
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidaaf1e62010-03-10 15:22:32 -0800492NOTE2: When panic_on_oom is set to "2", the whole system will panic in
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700493 case of an OOM event in any cgroup.
Balbir Singh52bc0d82009-01-07 18:08:03 -0800494
Balbir Singha6df6362009-09-23 15:56:34 -07004957. Soft limits
496
497Soft limits allow for greater sharing of memory. The idea behind soft limits
498is to allow control groups to use as much of the memory as needed, provided
499
500a. There is no memory contention
501b. They do not exceed their hard limit
502
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700503When the system detects memory contention or low memory, control groups
Balbir Singha6df6362009-09-23 15:56:34 -0700504are pushed back to their soft limits. If the soft limit of each control
505group is very high, they are pushed back as much as possible to make
506sure that one control group does not starve the others of memory.
507
508Please note that soft limits is a best effort feature, it comes with
509no guarantees, but it does its best to make sure that when memory is
510heavily contended for, memory is allocated based on the soft limit
511hints/setup. Currently soft limit based reclaim is setup such that
512it gets invoked from balance_pgdat (kswapd).
513
5147.1 Interface
515
516Soft limits can be setup by using the following commands (in this example we
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700517assume a soft limit of 256 MiB)
Balbir Singha6df6362009-09-23 15:56:34 -0700518
519# echo 256M > memory.soft_limit_in_bytes
520
521If we want to change this to 1G, we can at any time use
522
523# echo 1G > memory.soft_limit_in_bytes
524
525NOTE1: Soft limits take effect over a long period of time, since they involve
526 reclaiming memory for balancing between memory cgroups
527NOTE2: It is recommended to set the soft limit always below the hard limit,
528 otherwise the hard limit will take precedence.
529
Daisuke Nishimura7dc74be2010-03-10 15:22:13 -08005308. Move charges at task migration
531
532Users can move charges associated with a task along with task migration, that
533is, uncharge task's pages from the old cgroup and charge them to the new cgroup.
Daisuke Nishimura02491442010-03-10 15:22:17 -0800534This feature is not supported in !CONFIG_MMU environments because of lack of
535page tables.
Daisuke Nishimura7dc74be2010-03-10 15:22:13 -0800536
5378.1 Interface
538
539This feature is disabled by default. It can be enabled(and disabled again) by
540writing to memory.move_charge_at_immigrate of the destination cgroup.
541
542If you want to enable it:
543
544# echo (some positive value) > memory.move_charge_at_immigrate
545
546Note: Each bits of move_charge_at_immigrate has its own meaning about what type
547 of charges should be moved. See 8.2 for details.
548Note: Charges are moved only when you move mm->owner, IOW, a leader of a thread
549 group.
550Note: If we cannot find enough space for the task in the destination cgroup, we
551 try to make space by reclaiming memory. Task migration may fail if we
552 cannot make enough space.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700553Note: It can take several seconds if you move charges much.
Daisuke Nishimura7dc74be2010-03-10 15:22:13 -0800554
555And if you want disable it again:
556
557# echo 0 > memory.move_charge_at_immigrate
558
5598.2 Type of charges which can be move
560
561Each bits of move_charge_at_immigrate has its own meaning about what type of
Daisuke Nishimura87946a72010-05-26 14:42:39 -0700562charges should be moved. But in any cases, it must be noted that an account of
563a page or a swap can be moved only when it is charged to the task's current(old)
564memory cgroup.
Daisuke Nishimura7dc74be2010-03-10 15:22:13 -0800565
566 bit | what type of charges would be moved ?
567 -----+------------------------------------------------------------------------
568 0 | A charge of an anonymous page(or swap of it) used by the target task.
569 | Those pages and swaps must be used only by the target task. You must
570 | enable Swap Extension(see 2.4) to enable move of swap charges.
Daisuke Nishimura87946a72010-05-26 14:42:39 -0700571 -----+------------------------------------------------------------------------
572 1 | A charge of file pages(normal file, tmpfs file(e.g. ipc shared memory)
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700573 | and swaps of tmpfs file) mmapped by the target task. Unlike the case of
Daisuke Nishimura87946a72010-05-26 14:42:39 -0700574 | anonymous pages, file pages(and swaps) in the range mmapped by the task
575 | will be moved even if the task hasn't done page fault, i.e. they might
576 | not be the task's "RSS", but other task's "RSS" that maps the same file.
577 | And mapcount of the page is ignored(the page can be moved even if
578 | page_mapcount(page) > 1). You must enable Swap Extension(see 2.4) to
579 | enable move of swap charges.
Daisuke Nishimura7dc74be2010-03-10 15:22:13 -0800580
5818.3 TODO
582
Daisuke Nishimura7dc74be2010-03-10 15:22:13 -0800583- Implement madvise(2) to let users decide the vma to be moved or not to be
584 moved.
585- All of moving charge operations are done under cgroup_mutex. It's not good
586 behavior to hold the mutex too long, so we may need some trick.
587
Kirill A. Shutemov2e72b632010-03-10 15:22:24 -08005889. Memory thresholds
589
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700590Memory cgroup implements memory thresholds using cgroups notification
Kirill A. Shutemov2e72b632010-03-10 15:22:24 -0800591API (see cgroups.txt). It allows to register multiple memory and memsw
592thresholds and gets notifications when it crosses.
593
594To register a threshold application need:
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700595- create an eventfd using eventfd(2);
596- open memory.usage_in_bytes or memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes;
597- write string like "<event_fd> <fd of memory.usage_in_bytes> <threshold>" to
598 cgroup.event_control.
Kirill A. Shutemov2e72b632010-03-10 15:22:24 -0800599
600Application will be notified through eventfd when memory usage crosses
601threshold in any direction.
602
603It's applicable for root and non-root cgroup.
604
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki9490ff22010-05-26 14:42:36 -070060510. OOM Control
606
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki3c11ecf2010-05-26 14:42:37 -0700607memory.oom_control file is for OOM notification and other controls.
608
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700609Memory cgroup implements OOM notifier using cgroup notification
610API (See cgroups.txt). It allows to register multiple OOM notification
611delivery and gets notification when OOM happens.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki9490ff22010-05-26 14:42:36 -0700612
613To register a notifier, application need:
614 - create an eventfd using eventfd(2)
615 - open memory.oom_control file
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700616 - write string like "<event_fd> <fd of memory.oom_control>" to
617 cgroup.event_control
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki9490ff22010-05-26 14:42:36 -0700618
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700619Application will be notified through eventfd when OOM happens.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki9490ff22010-05-26 14:42:36 -0700620OOM notification doesn't work for root cgroup.
621
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700622You can disable OOM-killer by writing "1" to memory.oom_control file, as:
623
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki3c11ecf2010-05-26 14:42:37 -0700624 #echo 1 > memory.oom_control
625
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700626This operation is only allowed to the top cgroup of sub-hierarchy.
627If OOM-killer is disabled, tasks under cgroup will hang/sleep
628in memory cgroup's OOM-waitqueue when they request accountable memory.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki3c11ecf2010-05-26 14:42:37 -0700629
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700630For running them, you have to relax the memory cgroup's OOM status by
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki3c11ecf2010-05-26 14:42:37 -0700631 * enlarge limit or reduce usage.
632To reduce usage,
633 * kill some tasks.
634 * move some tasks to other group with account migration.
635 * remove some files (on tmpfs?)
636
637Then, stopped tasks will work again.
638
639At reading, current status of OOM is shown.
640 oom_kill_disable 0 or 1 (if 1, oom-killer is disabled)
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700641 under_oom 0 or 1 (if 1, the memory cgroup is under OOM, tasks may
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki3c11ecf2010-05-26 14:42:37 -0700642 be stopped.)
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki9490ff22010-05-26 14:42:36 -0700643
64411. TODO
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800645
6461. Add support for accounting huge pages (as a separate controller)
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidfc05c22008-02-07 00:14:41 -08006472. Make per-cgroup scanner reclaim not-shared pages first
6483. Teach controller to account for shared-pages
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki628f4232008-07-25 01:47:20 -07006494. Start reclamation in the background when the limit is
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800650 not yet hit but the usage is getting closer
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800651
652Summary
653
654Overall, the memory controller has been a stable controller and has been
655commented and discussed quite extensively in the community.
656
657References
658
6591. Singh, Balbir. RFC: Memory Controller, http://lwn.net/Articles/206697/
6602. Singh, Balbir. Memory Controller (RSS Control),
661 http://lwn.net/Articles/222762/
6623. Emelianov, Pavel. Resource controllers based on process cgroups
663 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/3/6/198
6644. Emelianov, Pavel. RSS controller based on process cgroups (v2)
Li Zefan2324c5d2008-02-23 15:24:12 -0800665 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/4/9/78
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -08006665. Emelianov, Pavel. RSS controller based on process cgroups (v3)
667 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/30/244
6686. Menage, Paul. Control Groups v10, http://lwn.net/Articles/236032/
6697. Vaidyanathan, Srinivasan, Control Groups: Pagecache accounting and control
670 subsystem (v3), http://lwn.net/Articles/235534/
Li Zefan2324c5d2008-02-23 15:24:12 -08006718. Singh, Balbir. RSS controller v2 test results (lmbench),
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800672 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/17/232
Li Zefan2324c5d2008-02-23 15:24:12 -08006739. Singh, Balbir. RSS controller v2 AIM9 results
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800674 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/18/1
Li Zefan2324c5d2008-02-23 15:24:12 -080067510. Singh, Balbir. Memory controller v6 test results,
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800676 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/19/36
Li Zefan2324c5d2008-02-23 15:24:12 -080067711. Singh, Balbir. Memory controller introduction (v6),
678 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/17/69
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -080067912. Corbet, Jonathan, Controlling memory use in cgroups,
680 http://lwn.net/Articles/243795/