blob: 7c163477fcd8f001fb217cc66e4c67812af907a7 [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()
Daisuke Nishimuraa111c962011-04-27 15:26:48 -070055 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)
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -070059 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.
73
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800741. History
75
76The memory controller has a long history. A request for comments for the memory
77controller was posted by Balbir Singh [1]. At the time the RFC was posted
78there were several implementations for memory control. The goal of the
79RFC was to build consensus and agreement for the minimal features required
80for memory control. The first RSS controller was posted by Balbir Singh[2]
81in Feb 2007. Pavel Emelianov [3][4][5] has since posted three versions of the
82RSS controller. At OLS, at the resource management BoF, everyone suggested
83that we handle both page cache and RSS together. Another request was raised
84to allow user space handling of OOM. The current memory controller is
85at version 6; it combines both mapped (RSS) and unmapped Page
86Cache Control [11].
87
882. Memory Control
89
90Memory is a unique resource in the sense that it is present in a limited
91amount. If a task requires a lot of CPU processing, the task can spread
92its processing over a period of hours, days, months or years, but with
93memory, the same physical memory needs to be reused to accomplish the task.
94
95The memory controller implementation has been divided into phases. These
96are:
97
981. Memory controller
992. mlock(2) controller
1003. Kernel user memory accounting and slab control
1014. user mappings length controller
102
103The memory controller is the first controller developed.
104
1052.1. Design
106
107The core of the design is a counter called the res_counter. The res_counter
108tracks the current memory usage and limit of the group of processes associated
109with the controller. Each cgroup has a memory controller specific data
110structure (mem_cgroup) associated with it.
111
1122.2. Accounting
113
114 +--------------------+
115 | mem_cgroup |
116 | (res_counter) |
117 +--------------------+
118 / ^ \
119 / | \
120 +---------------+ | +---------------+
121 | mm_struct | |.... | mm_struct |
122 | | | | |
123 +---------------+ | +---------------+
124 |
125 + --------------+
126 |
127 +---------------+ +------+--------+
128 | page +----------> page_cgroup|
129 | | | |
130 +---------------+ +---------------+
131
132 (Figure 1: Hierarchy of Accounting)
133
134
135Figure 1 shows the important aspects of the controller
136
1371. Accounting happens per cgroup
1382. Each mm_struct knows about which cgroup it belongs to
1393. Each page has a pointer to the page_cgroup, which in turn knows the
140 cgroup it belongs to
141
142The accounting is done as follows: mem_cgroup_charge() is invoked to setup
143the necessary data structures and check if the cgroup that is being charged
144is over its limit. If it is then reclaim is invoked on the cgroup.
145More details can be found in the reclaim section of this document.
146If everything goes well, a page meta-data-structure called page_cgroup is
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700147updated. page_cgroup has its own LRU on cgroup.
148(*) page_cgroup structure is allocated at boot/memory-hotplug time.
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800149
1502.2.1 Accounting details
151
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki5b4e6552008-10-18 20:28:10 -0700152All mapped anon pages (RSS) and cache pages (Page Cache) are accounted.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700153Some pages which are never reclaimable and will not be on the global LRU
154are not accounted. We just account pages under usual VM management.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki5b4e6552008-10-18 20:28:10 -0700155
156RSS pages are accounted at page_fault unless they've already been accounted
157for earlier. A file page will be accounted for as Page Cache when it's
158inserted into inode (radix-tree). While it's mapped into the page tables of
159processes, duplicate accounting is carefully avoided.
160
161A RSS page is unaccounted when it's fully unmapped. A PageCache page is
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700162unaccounted when it's removed from radix-tree. Even if RSS pages are fully
163unmapped (by kswapd), they may exist as SwapCache in the system until they
164are really freed. Such SwapCaches also also accounted.
165A swapped-in page is not accounted until it's mapped.
166
167Note: The kernel does swapin-readahead and read multiple swaps at once.
168This means swapped-in pages may contain pages for other tasks than a task
169causing page fault. So, we avoid accounting at swap-in I/O.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki5b4e6552008-10-18 20:28:10 -0700170
171At page migration, accounting information is kept.
172
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700173Note: we just account pages-on-LRU because our purpose is to control amount
174of used pages; not-on-LRU pages tend to be out-of-control from VM view.
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800175
1762.3 Shared Page Accounting
177
178Shared pages are accounted on the basis of the first touch approach. The
179cgroup that first touches a page is accounted for the page. The principle
180behind this approach is that a cgroup that aggressively uses a shared
181page will eventually get charged for it (once it is uncharged from
182the cgroup that brought it in -- this will happen on memory pressure).
183
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki8c7c6e342009-01-07 18:08:00 -0800184Exception: If CONFIG_CGROUP_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR_SWAP is not used..
185When you do swapoff and make swapped-out pages of shmem(tmpfs) to
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukid13d1442009-01-07 18:07:56 -0800186be backed into memory in force, charges for pages are accounted against the
187caller of swapoff rather than the users of shmem.
188
189
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki8c7c6e342009-01-07 18:08:00 -08001902.4 Swap Extension (CONFIG_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR_SWAP)
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700191
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki8c7c6e342009-01-07 18:08:00 -0800192Swap Extension allows you to record charge for swap. A swapped-in page is
193charged back to original page allocator if possible.
194
195When swap is accounted, following files are added.
196 - memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes.
197 - memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes.
198
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700199memsw means memory+swap. Usage of memory+swap is limited by
200memsw.limit_in_bytes.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki8c7c6e342009-01-07 18:08:00 -0800201
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700202Example: Assume a system with 4G of swap. A task which allocates 6G of memory
203(by mistake) under 2G memory limitation will use all swap.
204In this case, setting memsw.limit_in_bytes=3G will prevent bad use of swap.
205By using memsw limit, you can avoid system OOM which can be caused by swap
206shortage.
207
208* why 'memory+swap' rather than swap.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki8c7c6e342009-01-07 18:08:00 -0800209The global LRU(kswapd) can swap out arbitrary pages. Swap-out means
210to move account from memory to swap...there is no change in usage of
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700211memory+swap. In other words, when we want to limit the usage of swap without
212affecting global LRU, memory+swap limit is better than just limiting swap from
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki22a668d2009-06-17 16:27:19 -0700213OS point of view.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki8c7c6e342009-01-07 18:08:00 -0800214
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki22a668d2009-06-17 16:27:19 -0700215* What happens when a cgroup hits memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes
216When a cgroup his memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes, it's useless to do swap-out
217in this cgroup. Then, swap-out will not be done by cgroup routine and file
218caches are dropped. But as mentioned above, global LRU can do swapout memory
219from it for sanity of the system's memory management state. You can't forbid
220it by cgroup.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki8c7c6e342009-01-07 18:08:00 -0800221
2222.5 Reclaim
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800223
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700224Each cgroup maintains a per cgroup LRU which has the same structure as
225global VM. When a cgroup goes over its limit, we first try
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800226to reclaim memory from the cgroup so as to make space for the new
227pages that the cgroup has touched. If the reclaim is unsuccessful,
228an OOM routine is invoked to select and kill the bulkiest task in the
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700229cgroup. (See 10. OOM Control below.)
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800230
231The reclaim algorithm has not been modified for cgroups, except that
232pages that are selected for reclaiming come from the per cgroup LRU
233list.
234
Balbir Singh4b3bde42009-09-23 15:56:32 -0700235NOTE: Reclaim does not work for the root cgroup, since we cannot set any
236limits on the root cgroup.
237
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidaaf1e62010-03-10 15:22:32 -0800238Note2: When panic_on_oom is set to "2", the whole system will panic.
239
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki9490ff22010-05-26 14:42:36 -0700240When oom event notifier is registered, event will be delivered.
241(See oom_control section)
242
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -07002432.6 Locking
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800244
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700245 lock_page_cgroup()/unlock_page_cgroup() should not be called under
246 mapping->tree_lock.
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800247
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700248 Other lock order is following:
249 PG_locked.
250 mm->page_table_lock
251 zone->lru_lock
252 lock_page_cgroup.
253 In many cases, just lock_page_cgroup() is called.
254 per-zone-per-cgroup LRU (cgroup's private LRU) is just guarded by
255 zone->lru_lock, it has no lock of its own.
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800256
2573. User Interface
258
2590. Configuration
260
261a. Enable CONFIG_CGROUPS
262b. Enable CONFIG_RESOURCE_COUNTERS
Balbir Singh00f0b822008-03-04 14:28:39 -0800263c. Enable CONFIG_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700264d. Enable CONFIG_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR_SWAP (to use swap extension)
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800265
2661. Prepare the cgroups
267# mkdir -p /cgroups
268# mount -t cgroup none /cgroups -o memory
269
2702. Make the new group and move bash into it
271# mkdir /cgroups/0
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700272# echo $$ > /cgroups/0/tasks
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800273
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700274Since now we're in the 0 cgroup, we can alter the memory limit:
Balbir Singhfb789222008-03-04 14:28:24 -0800275# echo 4M > /cgroups/0/memory.limit_in_bytes
Balbir Singh0eea1032008-02-07 00:13:57 -0800276
277NOTE: We can use a suffix (k, K, m, M, g or G) to indicate values in kilo,
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700278mega or gigabytes. (Here, Kilo, Mega, Giga are Kibibytes, Mebibytes, Gibibytes.)
279
Daisuke Nishimurac5b947b2009-06-17 16:27:20 -0700280NOTE: We can write "-1" to reset the *.limit_in_bytes(unlimited).
Balbir Singh4b3bde42009-09-23 15:56:32 -0700281NOTE: We cannot set limits on the root cgroup any more.
Balbir Singh0eea1032008-02-07 00:13:57 -0800282
283# cat /cgroups/0/memory.limit_in_bytes
Li Zefan2324c5d2008-02-23 15:24:12 -08002844194304
Balbir Singh0eea1032008-02-07 00:13:57 -0800285
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800286We can check the usage:
Balbir Singh0eea1032008-02-07 00:13:57 -0800287# cat /cgroups/0/memory.usage_in_bytes
Li Zefan2324c5d2008-02-23 15:24:12 -08002881216512
Balbir Singh0eea1032008-02-07 00:13:57 -0800289
290A successful write to this file does not guarantee a successful set of
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700291this limit to the value written into the file. This can be due to a
Balbir Singh0eea1032008-02-07 00:13:57 -0800292number of factors, such as rounding up to page boundaries or the total
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700293availability of memory on the system. The user is required to re-read
Balbir Singh0eea1032008-02-07 00:13:57 -0800294this file after a write to guarantee the value committed by the kernel.
295
Balbir Singhfb789222008-03-04 14:28:24 -0800296# echo 1 > memory.limit_in_bytes
Balbir Singh0eea1032008-02-07 00:13:57 -0800297# cat memory.limit_in_bytes
Li Zefan2324c5d2008-02-23 15:24:12 -08002984096
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800299
300The memory.failcnt field gives the number of times that the cgroup limit was
301exceeded.
302
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidfc05c22008-02-07 00:14:41 -0800303The memory.stat file gives accounting information. Now, the number of
304caches, RSS and Active pages/Inactive pages are shown.
305
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -08003064. Testing
307
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700308For testing features and implementation, see memcg_test.txt.
309
310Performance test is also important. To see pure memory controller's overhead,
311testing on tmpfs will give you good numbers of small overheads.
312Example: do kernel make on tmpfs.
313
314Page-fault scalability is also important. At measuring parallel
315page fault test, multi-process test may be better than multi-thread
316test because it has noise of shared objects/status.
317
318But the above two are testing extreme situations.
319Trying usual test under memory controller is always helpful.
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800320
3214.1 Troubleshooting
322
323Sometimes a user might find that the application under a cgroup is
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700324terminated by OOM killer. There are several causes for this:
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800325
3261. The cgroup limit is too low (just too low to do anything useful)
3272. The user is using anonymous memory and swap is turned off or too low
328
329A sync followed by echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches will help get rid of
330some of the pages cached in the cgroup (page cache pages).
331
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700332To know what happens, disable OOM_Kill by 10. OOM Control(see below) and
333seeing what happens will be helpful.
334
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -08003354.2 Task migration
336
Francis Galieguea33f3222010-04-23 00:08:02 +0200337When a task migrates from one cgroup to another, its charge is not
Daisuke Nishimura7dc74be2010-03-10 15:22:13 -0800338carried forward by default. The pages allocated from the original cgroup still
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800339remain charged to it, the charge is dropped when the page is freed or
340reclaimed.
341
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700342You can move charges of a task along with task migration.
343See 8. "Move charges at task migration"
Daisuke Nishimura7dc74be2010-03-10 15:22:13 -0800344
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -08003454.3 Removing a cgroup
346
347A cgroup can be removed by rmdir, but as discussed in sections 4.1 and 4.2, a
348cgroup might have some charge associated with it, even though all
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700349tasks have migrated away from it. (because we charge against pages, not
350against tasks.)
351
352Such charges are freed or moved to their parent. At moving, both of RSS
353and CACHES are moved to parent.
354rmdir() may return -EBUSY if freeing/moving fails. See 5.1 also.
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800355
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki8c7c6e342009-01-07 18:08:00 -0800356Charges recorded in swap information is not updated at removal of cgroup.
357Recorded information is discarded and a cgroup which uses swap (swapcache)
358will be charged as a new owner of it.
359
360
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukic1e862c2009-01-07 18:07:55 -08003615. Misc. interfaces.
362
3635.1 force_empty
364 memory.force_empty interface is provided to make cgroup's memory usage empty.
365 You can use this interface only when the cgroup has no tasks.
366 When writing anything to this
367
368 # echo 0 > memory.force_empty
369
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700370 Almost all pages tracked by this memory cgroup will be unmapped and freed.
371 Some pages cannot be freed because they are locked or in-use. Such pages are
372 moved to parent and this cgroup will be empty. This may return -EBUSY if
373 VM is too busy to free/move all pages immediately.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukic1e862c2009-01-07 18:07:55 -0800374
375 Typical use case of this interface is that calling this before rmdir().
376 Because rmdir() moves all pages to parent, some out-of-use page caches can be
377 moved to the parent. If you want to avoid that, force_empty will be useful.
378
KOSAKI Motohiro7f016ee2009-01-07 18:08:22 -08003795.2 stat file
KOSAKI Motohiro7f016ee2009-01-07 18:08:22 -0800380
Bharata B Raoc863d832009-04-13 14:40:15 -0700381memory.stat file includes following statistics
KOSAKI Motohiro7f016ee2009-01-07 18:08:22 -0800382
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700383# per-memory cgroup local status
Bharata B Raoc863d832009-04-13 14:40:15 -0700384cache - # of bytes of page cache memory.
385rss - # of bytes of anonymous and swap cache memory.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700386mapped_file - # of bytes of mapped file (includes tmpfs/shmem)
Bharata B Raoc863d832009-04-13 14:40:15 -0700387pgpgin - # of pages paged in (equivalent to # of charging events).
388pgpgout - # of pages paged out (equivalent to # of uncharging events).
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700389swap - # of bytes of swap usage
Bharata B Raoc863d832009-04-13 14:40:15 -0700390inactive_anon - # of bytes of anonymous memory and swap cache memory on
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700391 LRU list.
392active_anon - # of bytes of anonymous and swap cache memory on active
393 inactive LRU list.
394inactive_file - # of bytes of file-backed memory on inactive LRU list.
395active_file - # of bytes of file-backed memory on active LRU list.
Bharata B Raoc863d832009-04-13 14:40:15 -0700396unevictable - # of bytes of memory that cannot be reclaimed (mlocked etc).
397
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700398# status considering hierarchy (see memory.use_hierarchy settings)
399
400hierarchical_memory_limit - # of bytes of memory limit with regard to hierarchy
401 under which the memory cgroup is
402hierarchical_memsw_limit - # of bytes of memory+swap limit with regard to
403 hierarchy under which memory cgroup is.
404
405total_cache - sum of all children's "cache"
406total_rss - sum of all children's "rss"
407total_mapped_file - sum of all children's "cache"
408total_pgpgin - sum of all children's "pgpgin"
409total_pgpgout - sum of all children's "pgpgout"
410total_swap - sum of all children's "swap"
411total_inactive_anon - sum of all children's "inactive_anon"
412total_active_anon - sum of all children's "active_anon"
413total_inactive_file - sum of all children's "inactive_file"
414total_active_file - sum of all children's "active_file"
415total_unevictable - sum of all children's "unevictable"
416
417# The following additional stats are dependent on CONFIG_DEBUG_VM.
Bharata B Raoc863d832009-04-13 14:40:15 -0700418
419inactive_ratio - VM internal parameter. (see mm/page_alloc.c)
420recent_rotated_anon - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
421recent_rotated_file - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
422recent_scanned_anon - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
423recent_scanned_file - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
424
425Memo:
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700426 recent_rotated means recent frequency of LRU rotation.
427 recent_scanned means recent # of scans to LRU.
KOSAKI Motohiro7f016ee2009-01-07 18:08:22 -0800428 showing for better debug please see the code for meanings.
429
Bharata B Raoc863d832009-04-13 14:40:15 -0700430Note:
431 Only anonymous and swap cache memory is listed as part of 'rss' stat.
432 This should not be confused with the true 'resident set size' or the
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700433 amount of physical memory used by the cgroup.
434 'rss + file_mapped" will give you resident set size of cgroup.
435 (Note: file and shmem may be shared among other cgroups. In that case,
436 file_mapped is accounted only when the memory cgroup is owner of page
437 cache.)
KOSAKI Motohiro7f016ee2009-01-07 18:08:22 -0800438
KOSAKI Motohiroa7885eb2009-01-07 18:08:24 -08004395.3 swappiness
KOSAKI Motohiroa7885eb2009-01-07 18:08:24 -0800440
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700441Similar to /proc/sys/vm/swappiness, but affecting a hierarchy of groups only.
KOSAKI Motohiroa7885eb2009-01-07 18:08:24 -0800442
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700443Following cgroups' swappiness can't be changed.
444- root cgroup (uses /proc/sys/vm/swappiness).
445- a cgroup which uses hierarchy and it has other cgroup(s) below it.
446- a cgroup which uses hierarchy and not the root of hierarchy.
447
4485.4 failcnt
449
450A memory cgroup provides memory.failcnt and memory.memsw.failcnt files.
451This failcnt(== failure count) shows the number of times that a usage counter
452hit its limit. When a memory cgroup hits a limit, failcnt increases and
453memory under it will be reclaimed.
454
455You can reset failcnt by writing 0 to failcnt file.
456# echo 0 > .../memory.failcnt
KOSAKI Motohiroa7885eb2009-01-07 18:08:24 -0800457
Daisuke Nishimuraa111c962011-04-27 15:26:48 -07004585.5 usage_in_bytes
459
460For efficiency, as other kernel components, memory cgroup uses some optimization
461to avoid unnecessary cacheline false sharing. usage_in_bytes is affected by the
462method and doesn't show 'exact' value of memory(and swap) usage, it's an fuzz
463value for efficient access. (Of course, when necessary, it's synchronized.)
464If you want to know more exact memory usage, you should use RSS+CACHE(+SWAP)
465value in memory.stat(see 5.2).
466
Balbir Singh52bc0d82009-01-07 18:08:03 -08004676. Hierarchy support
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukic1e862c2009-01-07 18:07:55 -0800468
Balbir Singh52bc0d82009-01-07 18:08:03 -0800469The memory controller supports a deep hierarchy and hierarchical accounting.
470The hierarchy is created by creating the appropriate cgroups in the
471cgroup filesystem. Consider for example, the following cgroup filesystem
472hierarchy
473
474 root
475 / | \
476 / | \
477 a b c
478 | \
479 | \
480 d e
481
482In the diagram above, with hierarchical accounting enabled, all memory
483usage of e, is accounted to its ancestors up until the root (i.e, c and root),
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700484that has memory.use_hierarchy enabled. If one of the ancestors goes over its
Balbir Singh52bc0d82009-01-07 18:08:03 -0800485limit, the reclaim algorithm reclaims from the tasks in the ancestor and the
486children of the ancestor.
487
4886.1 Enabling hierarchical accounting and reclaim
489
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700490A memory cgroup by default disables the hierarchy feature. Support
Balbir Singh52bc0d82009-01-07 18:08:03 -0800491can be enabled by writing 1 to memory.use_hierarchy file of the root cgroup
492
493# echo 1 > memory.use_hierarchy
494
495The feature can be disabled by
496
497# echo 0 > memory.use_hierarchy
498
Greg Thelen689bca32011-02-16 17:51:23 -0800499NOTE1: Enabling/disabling will fail if either the cgroup already has other
500 cgroups created below it, or if the parent cgroup has use_hierarchy
501 enabled.
Balbir Singh52bc0d82009-01-07 18:08:03 -0800502
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidaaf1e62010-03-10 15:22:32 -0800503NOTE2: When panic_on_oom is set to "2", the whole system will panic in
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700504 case of an OOM event in any cgroup.
Balbir Singh52bc0d82009-01-07 18:08:03 -0800505
Balbir Singha6df6362009-09-23 15:56:34 -07005067. Soft limits
507
508Soft limits allow for greater sharing of memory. The idea behind soft limits
509is to allow control groups to use as much of the memory as needed, provided
510
511a. There is no memory contention
512b. They do not exceed their hard limit
513
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700514When the system detects memory contention or low memory, control groups
Balbir Singha6df6362009-09-23 15:56:34 -0700515are pushed back to their soft limits. If the soft limit of each control
516group is very high, they are pushed back as much as possible to make
517sure that one control group does not starve the others of memory.
518
519Please note that soft limits is a best effort feature, it comes with
520no guarantees, but it does its best to make sure that when memory is
521heavily contended for, memory is allocated based on the soft limit
522hints/setup. Currently soft limit based reclaim is setup such that
523it gets invoked from balance_pgdat (kswapd).
524
5257.1 Interface
526
527Soft limits can be setup by using the following commands (in this example we
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700528assume a soft limit of 256 MiB)
Balbir Singha6df6362009-09-23 15:56:34 -0700529
530# echo 256M > memory.soft_limit_in_bytes
531
532If we want to change this to 1G, we can at any time use
533
534# echo 1G > memory.soft_limit_in_bytes
535
536NOTE1: Soft limits take effect over a long period of time, since they involve
537 reclaiming memory for balancing between memory cgroups
538NOTE2: It is recommended to set the soft limit always below the hard limit,
539 otherwise the hard limit will take precedence.
540
Daisuke Nishimura7dc74be2010-03-10 15:22:13 -08005418. Move charges at task migration
542
543Users can move charges associated with a task along with task migration, that
544is, uncharge task's pages from the old cgroup and charge them to the new cgroup.
Daisuke Nishimura02491442010-03-10 15:22:17 -0800545This feature is not supported in !CONFIG_MMU environments because of lack of
546page tables.
Daisuke Nishimura7dc74be2010-03-10 15:22:13 -0800547
5488.1 Interface
549
550This feature is disabled by default. It can be enabled(and disabled again) by
551writing to memory.move_charge_at_immigrate of the destination cgroup.
552
553If you want to enable it:
554
555# echo (some positive value) > memory.move_charge_at_immigrate
556
557Note: Each bits of move_charge_at_immigrate has its own meaning about what type
558 of charges should be moved. See 8.2 for details.
559Note: Charges are moved only when you move mm->owner, IOW, a leader of a thread
560 group.
561Note: If we cannot find enough space for the task in the destination cgroup, we
562 try to make space by reclaiming memory. Task migration may fail if we
563 cannot make enough space.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700564Note: It can take several seconds if you move charges much.
Daisuke Nishimura7dc74be2010-03-10 15:22:13 -0800565
566And if you want disable it again:
567
568# echo 0 > memory.move_charge_at_immigrate
569
5708.2 Type of charges which can be move
571
572Each bits of move_charge_at_immigrate has its own meaning about what type of
Daisuke Nishimura87946a72010-05-26 14:42:39 -0700573charges should be moved. But in any cases, it must be noted that an account of
574a page or a swap can be moved only when it is charged to the task's current(old)
575memory cgroup.
Daisuke Nishimura7dc74be2010-03-10 15:22:13 -0800576
577 bit | what type of charges would be moved ?
578 -----+------------------------------------------------------------------------
579 0 | A charge of an anonymous page(or swap of it) used by the target task.
580 | Those pages and swaps must be used only by the target task. You must
581 | enable Swap Extension(see 2.4) to enable move of swap charges.
Daisuke Nishimura87946a72010-05-26 14:42:39 -0700582 -----+------------------------------------------------------------------------
583 1 | A charge of file pages(normal file, tmpfs file(e.g. ipc shared memory)
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700584 | and swaps of tmpfs file) mmapped by the target task. Unlike the case of
Daisuke Nishimura87946a72010-05-26 14:42:39 -0700585 | anonymous pages, file pages(and swaps) in the range mmapped by the task
586 | will be moved even if the task hasn't done page fault, i.e. they might
587 | not be the task's "RSS", but other task's "RSS" that maps the same file.
588 | And mapcount of the page is ignored(the page can be moved even if
589 | page_mapcount(page) > 1). You must enable Swap Extension(see 2.4) to
590 | enable move of swap charges.
Daisuke Nishimura7dc74be2010-03-10 15:22:13 -0800591
5928.3 TODO
593
Daisuke Nishimura7dc74be2010-03-10 15:22:13 -0800594- Implement madvise(2) to let users decide the vma to be moved or not to be
595 moved.
596- All of moving charge operations are done under cgroup_mutex. It's not good
597 behavior to hold the mutex too long, so we may need some trick.
598
Kirill A. Shutemov2e72b632010-03-10 15:22:24 -08005999. Memory thresholds
600
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700601Memory cgroup implements memory thresholds using cgroups notification
Kirill A. Shutemov2e72b632010-03-10 15:22:24 -0800602API (see cgroups.txt). It allows to register multiple memory and memsw
603thresholds and gets notifications when it crosses.
604
605To register a threshold application need:
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700606- create an eventfd using eventfd(2);
607- open memory.usage_in_bytes or memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes;
608- write string like "<event_fd> <fd of memory.usage_in_bytes> <threshold>" to
609 cgroup.event_control.
Kirill A. Shutemov2e72b632010-03-10 15:22:24 -0800610
611Application will be notified through eventfd when memory usage crosses
612threshold in any direction.
613
614It's applicable for root and non-root cgroup.
615
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki9490ff22010-05-26 14:42:36 -070061610. OOM Control
617
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki3c11ecf2010-05-26 14:42:37 -0700618memory.oom_control file is for OOM notification and other controls.
619
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700620Memory cgroup implements OOM notifier using cgroup notification
621API (See cgroups.txt). It allows to register multiple OOM notification
622delivery and gets notification when OOM happens.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki9490ff22010-05-26 14:42:36 -0700623
624To register a notifier, application need:
625 - create an eventfd using eventfd(2)
626 - open memory.oom_control file
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700627 - write string like "<event_fd> <fd of memory.oom_control>" to
628 cgroup.event_control
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki9490ff22010-05-26 14:42:36 -0700629
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700630Application will be notified through eventfd when OOM happens.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki9490ff22010-05-26 14:42:36 -0700631OOM notification doesn't work for root cgroup.
632
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700633You can disable OOM-killer by writing "1" to memory.oom_control file, as:
634
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki3c11ecf2010-05-26 14:42:37 -0700635 #echo 1 > memory.oom_control
636
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700637This operation is only allowed to the top cgroup of sub-hierarchy.
638If OOM-killer is disabled, tasks under cgroup will hang/sleep
639in memory cgroup's OOM-waitqueue when they request accountable memory.
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki3c11ecf2010-05-26 14:42:37 -0700640
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700641For running them, you have to relax the memory cgroup's OOM status by
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki3c11ecf2010-05-26 14:42:37 -0700642 * enlarge limit or reduce usage.
643To reduce usage,
644 * kill some tasks.
645 * move some tasks to other group with account migration.
646 * remove some files (on tmpfs?)
647
648Then, stopped tasks will work again.
649
650At reading, current status of OOM is shown.
651 oom_kill_disable 0 or 1 (if 1, oom-killer is disabled)
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidc10e282010-05-26 14:42:40 -0700652 under_oom 0 or 1 (if 1, the memory cgroup is under OOM, tasks may
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki3c11ecf2010-05-26 14:42:37 -0700653 be stopped.)
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki9490ff22010-05-26 14:42:36 -0700654
65511. TODO
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800656
6571. Add support for accounting huge pages (as a separate controller)
KAMEZAWA Hiroyukidfc05c22008-02-07 00:14:41 -08006582. Make per-cgroup scanner reclaim not-shared pages first
6593. Teach controller to account for shared-pages
KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki628f4232008-07-25 01:47:20 -07006604. Start reclamation in the background when the limit is
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800661 not yet hit but the usage is getting closer
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800662
663Summary
664
665Overall, the memory controller has been a stable controller and has been
666commented and discussed quite extensively in the community.
667
668References
669
6701. Singh, Balbir. RFC: Memory Controller, http://lwn.net/Articles/206697/
6712. Singh, Balbir. Memory Controller (RSS Control),
672 http://lwn.net/Articles/222762/
6733. Emelianov, Pavel. Resource controllers based on process cgroups
674 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/3/6/198
6754. Emelianov, Pavel. RSS controller based on process cgroups (v2)
Li Zefan2324c5d2008-02-23 15:24:12 -0800676 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/4/9/78
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -08006775. Emelianov, Pavel. RSS controller based on process cgroups (v3)
678 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/30/244
6796. Menage, Paul. Control Groups v10, http://lwn.net/Articles/236032/
6807. Vaidyanathan, Srinivasan, Control Groups: Pagecache accounting and control
681 subsystem (v3), http://lwn.net/Articles/235534/
Li Zefan2324c5d2008-02-23 15:24:12 -08006828. Singh, Balbir. RSS controller v2 test results (lmbench),
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800683 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/17/232
Li Zefan2324c5d2008-02-23 15:24:12 -08006849. Singh, Balbir. RSS controller v2 AIM9 results
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800685 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/18/1
Li Zefan2324c5d2008-02-23 15:24:12 -080068610. Singh, Balbir. Memory controller v6 test results,
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -0800687 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/19/36
Li Zefan2324c5d2008-02-23 15:24:12 -080068811. Singh, Balbir. Memory controller introduction (v6),
689 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/17/69
Balbir Singh1b6df3a2008-02-07 00:13:46 -080069012. Corbet, Jonathan, Controlling memory use in cgroups,
691 http://lwn.net/Articles/243795/