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1Memory Resource Controller
2
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3NOTE: The Memory Resource Controller has generically been referred to as the
4 memory controller in this document. Do not confuse memory controller
5 used here with the memory controller that is used in hardware.
1b6df3aa 6
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7(For editors)
8In this document:
9 When we mention a cgroup (cgroupfs's directory) with memory controller,
10 we call it "memory cgroup". When you see git-log and source code, you'll
11 see patch's title and function names tend to use "memcg".
12 In this document, we avoid using it.
1b6df3aa 13
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14Benefits and Purpose of the memory controller
15
16The memory controller isolates the memory behaviour of a group of tasks
17from the rest of the system. The article on LWN [12] mentions some probable
18uses of the memory controller. The memory controller can be used to
19
20a. Isolate an application or a group of applications
21 Memory hungry applications can be isolated and limited to a smaller
22 amount of memory.
23b. Create a cgroup with limited amount of memory, this can be used
24 as a good alternative to booting with mem=XXXX.
25c. Virtualization solutions can control the amount of memory they want
26 to assign to a virtual machine instance.
27d. A CD/DVD burner could control the amount of memory used by the
28 rest of the system to ensure that burning does not fail due to lack
29 of available memory.
30e. There are several other use cases, find one or use the controller just
31 for fun (to learn and hack on the VM subsystem).
32
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33Current Status: linux-2.6.34-mmotm(development version of 2010/April)
34
35Features:
36 - accounting anonymous pages, file caches, swap caches usage and limiting them.
6252efcc 37 - pages are linked to per-memcg LRU exclusively, and there is no global LRU.
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38 - optionally, memory+swap usage can be accounted and limited.
39 - hierarchical accounting
40 - soft limit
41 - moving(recharging) account at moving a task is selectable.
42 - usage threshold notifier
43 - oom-killer disable knob and oom-notifier
44 - Root cgroup has no limit controls.
45
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46 Kernel memory support is work in progress, and the current version provides
47 basically functionality. (See Section 2.7)
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48
49Brief summary of control files.
50
51 tasks # attach a task(thread) and show list of threads
52 cgroup.procs # show list of processes
53 cgroup.event_control # an interface for event_fd()
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54 memory.usage_in_bytes # show current res_counter usage for memory
55 (See 5.5 for details)
56 memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes # show current res_counter usage for memory+Swap
57 (See 5.5 for details)
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58 memory.limit_in_bytes # set/show limit of memory usage
59 memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes # set/show limit of memory+Swap usage
60 memory.failcnt # show the number of memory usage hits limits
61 memory.memsw.failcnt # show the number of memory+Swap hits limits
62 memory.max_usage_in_bytes # show max memory usage recorded
d66c1ce7 63 memory.memsw.max_usage_in_bytes # show max memory+Swap usage recorded
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64 memory.soft_limit_in_bytes # set/show soft limit of memory usage
65 memory.stat # show various statistics
66 memory.use_hierarchy # set/show hierarchical account enabled
67 memory.force_empty # trigger forced move charge to parent
68 memory.swappiness # set/show swappiness parameter of vmscan
69 (See sysctl's vm.swappiness)
70 memory.move_charge_at_immigrate # set/show controls of moving charges
71 memory.oom_control # set/show oom controls.
50c35e5b 72 memory.numa_stat # show the number of memory usage per numa node
dc10e281 73
3aaabe23 74 memory.kmem.tcp.limit_in_bytes # set/show hard limit for tcp buf memory
5a6dd343 75 memory.kmem.tcp.usage_in_bytes # show current tcp buf memory allocation
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76 memory.kmem.tcp.failcnt # show the number of tcp buf memory usage hits limits
77 memory.kmem.tcp.max_usage_in_bytes # show max tcp buf memory usage recorded
e5671dfa 78
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791. History
80
81The memory controller has a long history. A request for comments for the memory
82controller was posted by Balbir Singh [1]. At the time the RFC was posted
83there were several implementations for memory control. The goal of the
84RFC was to build consensus and agreement for the minimal features required
85for memory control. The first RSS controller was posted by Balbir Singh[2]
86in Feb 2007. Pavel Emelianov [3][4][5] has since posted three versions of the
87RSS controller. At OLS, at the resource management BoF, everyone suggested
88that we handle both page cache and RSS together. Another request was raised
89to allow user space handling of OOM. The current memory controller is
90at version 6; it combines both mapped (RSS) and unmapped Page
91Cache Control [11].
92
932. Memory Control
94
95Memory is a unique resource in the sense that it is present in a limited
96amount. If a task requires a lot of CPU processing, the task can spread
97its processing over a period of hours, days, months or years, but with
98memory, the same physical memory needs to be reused to accomplish the task.
99
100The memory controller implementation has been divided into phases. These
101are:
102
1031. Memory controller
1042. mlock(2) controller
1053. Kernel user memory accounting and slab control
1064. user mappings length controller
107
108The memory controller is the first controller developed.
109
1102.1. Design
111
112The core of the design is a counter called the res_counter. The res_counter
113tracks the current memory usage and limit of the group of processes associated
114with the controller. Each cgroup has a memory controller specific data
115structure (mem_cgroup) associated with it.
116
1172.2. Accounting
118
119 +--------------------+
120 | mem_cgroup |
121 | (res_counter) |
122 +--------------------+
123 / ^ \
124 / | \
125 +---------------+ | +---------------+
126 | mm_struct | |.... | mm_struct |
127 | | | | |
128 +---------------+ | +---------------+
129 |
130 + --------------+
131 |
132 +---------------+ +------+--------+
133 | page +----------> page_cgroup|
134 | | | |
135 +---------------+ +---------------+
136
137 (Figure 1: Hierarchy of Accounting)
138
139
140Figure 1 shows the important aspects of the controller
141
1421. Accounting happens per cgroup
1432. Each mm_struct knows about which cgroup it belongs to
1443. Each page has a pointer to the page_cgroup, which in turn knows the
145 cgroup it belongs to
146
147The accounting is done as follows: mem_cgroup_charge() is invoked to setup
148the necessary data structures and check if the cgroup that is being charged
149is over its limit. If it is then reclaim is invoked on the cgroup.
150More details can be found in the reclaim section of this document.
151If everything goes well, a page meta-data-structure called page_cgroup is
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152updated. page_cgroup has its own LRU on cgroup.
153(*) page_cgroup structure is allocated at boot/memory-hotplug time.
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154
1552.2.1 Accounting details
156
5b4e655e 157All mapped anon pages (RSS) and cache pages (Page Cache) are accounted.
6252efcc 158Some pages which are never reclaimable and will not be on the LRU
dc10e281 159are not accounted. We just account pages under usual VM management.
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160
161RSS pages are accounted at page_fault unless they've already been accounted
162for earlier. A file page will be accounted for as Page Cache when it's
163inserted into inode (radix-tree). While it's mapped into the page tables of
164processes, duplicate accounting is carefully avoided.
165
166A RSS page is unaccounted when it's fully unmapped. A PageCache page is
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167unaccounted when it's removed from radix-tree. Even if RSS pages are fully
168unmapped (by kswapd), they may exist as SwapCache in the system until they
169are really freed. Such SwapCaches also also accounted.
170A swapped-in page is not accounted until it's mapped.
171
172Note: The kernel does swapin-readahead and read multiple swaps at once.
173This means swapped-in pages may contain pages for other tasks than a task
174causing page fault. So, we avoid accounting at swap-in I/O.
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175
176At page migration, accounting information is kept.
177
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178Note: we just account pages-on-LRU because our purpose is to control amount
179of used pages; not-on-LRU pages tend to be out-of-control from VM view.
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180
1812.3 Shared Page Accounting
182
183Shared pages are accounted on the basis of the first touch approach. The
184cgroup that first touches a page is accounted for the page. The principle
185behind this approach is that a cgroup that aggressively uses a shared
186page will eventually get charged for it (once it is uncharged from
187the cgroup that brought it in -- this will happen on memory pressure).
188
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189But see section 8.2: when moving a task to another cgroup, its pages may
190be recharged to the new cgroup, if move_charge_at_immigrate has been chosen.
191
c255a458 192Exception: If CONFIG_CGROUP_CGROUP_MEMCG_SWAP is not used.
8c7c6e34 193When you do swapoff and make swapped-out pages of shmem(tmpfs) to
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194be backed into memory in force, charges for pages are accounted against the
195caller of swapoff rather than the users of shmem.
196
c255a458 1972.4 Swap Extension (CONFIG_MEMCG_SWAP)
dc10e281 198
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199Swap Extension allows you to record charge for swap. A swapped-in page is
200charged back to original page allocator if possible.
201
202When swap is accounted, following files are added.
203 - memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes.
204 - memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes.
205
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206memsw means memory+swap. Usage of memory+swap is limited by
207memsw.limit_in_bytes.
208
209Example: Assume a system with 4G of swap. A task which allocates 6G of memory
210(by mistake) under 2G memory limitation will use all swap.
211In this case, setting memsw.limit_in_bytes=3G will prevent bad use of swap.
212By using memsw limit, you can avoid system OOM which can be caused by swap
213shortage.
8c7c6e34 214
dc10e281 215* why 'memory+swap' rather than swap.
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216The global LRU(kswapd) can swap out arbitrary pages. Swap-out means
217to move account from memory to swap...there is no change in usage of
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218memory+swap. In other words, when we want to limit the usage of swap without
219affecting global LRU, memory+swap limit is better than just limiting swap from
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220OS point of view.
221
222* What happens when a cgroup hits memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes
67de0162 223When a cgroup hits memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes, it's useless to do swap-out
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224in this cgroup. Then, swap-out will not be done by cgroup routine and file
225caches are dropped. But as mentioned above, global LRU can do swapout memory
226from it for sanity of the system's memory management state. You can't forbid
227it by cgroup.
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228
2292.5 Reclaim
1b6df3aa 230
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231Each cgroup maintains a per cgroup LRU which has the same structure as
232global VM. When a cgroup goes over its limit, we first try
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233to reclaim memory from the cgroup so as to make space for the new
234pages that the cgroup has touched. If the reclaim is unsuccessful,
235an OOM routine is invoked to select and kill the bulkiest task in the
dc10e281 236cgroup. (See 10. OOM Control below.)
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237
238The reclaim algorithm has not been modified for cgroups, except that
239pages that are selected for reclaiming come from the per cgroup LRU
240list.
241
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242NOTE: Reclaim does not work for the root cgroup, since we cannot set any
243limits on the root cgroup.
244
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245Note2: When panic_on_oom is set to "2", the whole system will panic.
246
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247When oom event notifier is registered, event will be delivered.
248(See oom_control section)
249
dc10e281 2502.6 Locking
1b6df3aa 251
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252 lock_page_cgroup()/unlock_page_cgroup() should not be called under
253 mapping->tree_lock.
1b6df3aa 254
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255 Other lock order is following:
256 PG_locked.
257 mm->page_table_lock
258 zone->lru_lock
259 lock_page_cgroup.
260 In many cases, just lock_page_cgroup() is called.
261 per-zone-per-cgroup LRU (cgroup's private LRU) is just guarded by
262 zone->lru_lock, it has no lock of its own.
1b6df3aa 263
c255a458 2642.7 Kernel Memory Extension (CONFIG_MEMCG_KMEM)
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265
266With the Kernel memory extension, the Memory Controller is able to limit
267the amount of kernel memory used by the system. Kernel memory is fundamentally
268different than user memory, since it can't be swapped out, which makes it
269possible to DoS the system by consuming too much of this precious resource.
270
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271Kernel memory limits are not imposed for the root cgroup. Usage for the root
272cgroup may or may not be accounted.
273
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274Currently no soft limit is implemented for kernel memory. It is future work
275to trigger slab reclaim when those limits are reached.
276
2772.7.1 Current Kernel Memory resources accounted
278
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279* sockets memory pressure: some sockets protocols have memory pressure
280thresholds. The Memory Controller allows them to be controlled individually
281per cgroup, instead of globally.
e5671dfa 282
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283* tcp memory pressure: sockets memory pressure for the tcp protocol.
284
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2853. User Interface
286
2870. Configuration
288
289a. Enable CONFIG_CGROUPS
290b. Enable CONFIG_RESOURCE_COUNTERS
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291c. Enable CONFIG_MEMCG
292d. Enable CONFIG_MEMCG_SWAP (to use swap extension)
1b6df3aa 293
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2941. Prepare the cgroups (see cgroups.txt, Why are cgroups needed?)
295# mount -t tmpfs none /sys/fs/cgroup
296# mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/memory
297# mount -t cgroup none /sys/fs/cgroup/memory -o memory
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298
2992. Make the new group and move bash into it
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300# mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0
301# echo $$ > /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0/tasks
1b6df3aa 302
dc10e281 303Since now we're in the 0 cgroup, we can alter the memory limit:
f6e07d38 304# echo 4M > /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0/memory.limit_in_bytes
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305
306NOTE: We can use a suffix (k, K, m, M, g or G) to indicate values in kilo,
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307mega or gigabytes. (Here, Kilo, Mega, Giga are Kibibytes, Mebibytes, Gibibytes.)
308
c5b947b2 309NOTE: We can write "-1" to reset the *.limit_in_bytes(unlimited).
4b3bde4c 310NOTE: We cannot set limits on the root cgroup any more.
0eea1030 311
f6e07d38 312# cat /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0/memory.limit_in_bytes
2324c5dd 3134194304
0eea1030 314
1b6df3aa 315We can check the usage:
f6e07d38 316# cat /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0/memory.usage_in_bytes
2324c5dd 3171216512
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318
319A successful write to this file does not guarantee a successful set of
dc10e281 320this limit to the value written into the file. This can be due to a
0eea1030 321number of factors, such as rounding up to page boundaries or the total
dc10e281 322availability of memory on the system. The user is required to re-read
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323this file after a write to guarantee the value committed by the kernel.
324
fb78922c 325# echo 1 > memory.limit_in_bytes
0eea1030 326# cat memory.limit_in_bytes
2324c5dd 3274096
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328
329The memory.failcnt field gives the number of times that the cgroup limit was
330exceeded.
331
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332The memory.stat file gives accounting information. Now, the number of
333caches, RSS and Active pages/Inactive pages are shown.
334
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3354. Testing
336
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337For testing features and implementation, see memcg_test.txt.
338
339Performance test is also important. To see pure memory controller's overhead,
340testing on tmpfs will give you good numbers of small overheads.
341Example: do kernel make on tmpfs.
342
343Page-fault scalability is also important. At measuring parallel
344page fault test, multi-process test may be better than multi-thread
345test because it has noise of shared objects/status.
346
347But the above two are testing extreme situations.
348Trying usual test under memory controller is always helpful.
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349
3504.1 Troubleshooting
351
352Sometimes a user might find that the application under a cgroup is
dc10e281 353terminated by OOM killer. There are several causes for this:
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354
3551. The cgroup limit is too low (just too low to do anything useful)
3562. The user is using anonymous memory and swap is turned off or too low
357
358A sync followed by echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches will help get rid of
359some of the pages cached in the cgroup (page cache pages).
360
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361To know what happens, disable OOM_Kill by 10. OOM Control(see below) and
362seeing what happens will be helpful.
363
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3644.2 Task migration
365
a33f3224 366When a task migrates from one cgroup to another, its charge is not
7dc74be0 367carried forward by default. The pages allocated from the original cgroup still
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368remain charged to it, the charge is dropped when the page is freed or
369reclaimed.
370
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371You can move charges of a task along with task migration.
372See 8. "Move charges at task migration"
7dc74be0 373
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3744.3 Removing a cgroup
375
376A cgroup can be removed by rmdir, but as discussed in sections 4.1 and 4.2, a
377cgroup might have some charge associated with it, even though all
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378tasks have migrated away from it. (because we charge against pages, not
379against tasks.)
380
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381We move the stats to root (if use_hierarchy==0) or parent (if
382use_hierarchy==1), and no change on the charge except uncharging
383from the child.
1b6df3aa 384
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385Charges recorded in swap information is not updated at removal of cgroup.
386Recorded information is discarded and a cgroup which uses swap (swapcache)
387will be charged as a new owner of it.
388
cc926f78 389About use_hierarchy, see Section 6.
8c7c6e34 390
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3915. Misc. interfaces.
392
3935.1 force_empty
394 memory.force_empty interface is provided to make cgroup's memory usage empty.
395 You can use this interface only when the cgroup has no tasks.
396 When writing anything to this
397
398 # echo 0 > memory.force_empty
399
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400 Almost all pages tracked by this memory cgroup will be unmapped and freed.
401 Some pages cannot be freed because they are locked or in-use. Such pages are
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402 moved to parent(if use_hierarchy==1) or root (if use_hierarchy==0) and this
403 cgroup will be empty.
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404
405 Typical use case of this interface is that calling this before rmdir().
406 Because rmdir() moves all pages to parent, some out-of-use page caches can be
407 moved to the parent. If you want to avoid that, force_empty will be useful.
408
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409 About use_hierarchy, see Section 6.
410
7f016ee8 4115.2 stat file
c863d835 412
185efc0f 413memory.stat file includes following statistics
c863d835 414
dc10e281 415# per-memory cgroup local status
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416cache - # of bytes of page cache memory.
417rss - # of bytes of anonymous and swap cache memory.
dc10e281 418mapped_file - # of bytes of mapped file (includes tmpfs/shmem)
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419pgpgin - # of charging events to the memory cgroup. The charging
420 event happens each time a page is accounted as either mapped
421 anon page(RSS) or cache page(Page Cache) to the cgroup.
422pgpgout - # of uncharging events to the memory cgroup. The uncharging
423 event happens each time a page is unaccounted from the cgroup.
dc10e281 424swap - # of bytes of swap usage
c863d835 425inactive_anon - # of bytes of anonymous memory and swap cache memory on
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426 LRU list.
427active_anon - # of bytes of anonymous and swap cache memory on active
428 inactive LRU list.
429inactive_file - # of bytes of file-backed memory on inactive LRU list.
430active_file - # of bytes of file-backed memory on active LRU list.
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431unevictable - # of bytes of memory that cannot be reclaimed (mlocked etc).
432
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433# status considering hierarchy (see memory.use_hierarchy settings)
434
435hierarchical_memory_limit - # of bytes of memory limit with regard to hierarchy
436 under which the memory cgroup is
437hierarchical_memsw_limit - # of bytes of memory+swap limit with regard to
438 hierarchy under which memory cgroup is.
439
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440total_<counter> - # hierarchical version of <counter>, which in
441 addition to the cgroup's own value includes the
442 sum of all hierarchical children's values of
443 <counter>, i.e. total_cache
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444
445# The following additional stats are dependent on CONFIG_DEBUG_VM.
c863d835 446
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447recent_rotated_anon - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
448recent_rotated_file - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
449recent_scanned_anon - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
450recent_scanned_file - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
451
452Memo:
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453 recent_rotated means recent frequency of LRU rotation.
454 recent_scanned means recent # of scans to LRU.
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455 showing for better debug please see the code for meanings.
456
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457Note:
458 Only anonymous and swap cache memory is listed as part of 'rss' stat.
459 This should not be confused with the true 'resident set size' or the
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460 amount of physical memory used by the cgroup.
461 'rss + file_mapped" will give you resident set size of cgroup.
462 (Note: file and shmem may be shared among other cgroups. In that case,
463 file_mapped is accounted only when the memory cgroup is owner of page
464 cache.)
7f016ee8 465
a7885eb8 4665.3 swappiness
a7885eb8 467
dc10e281 468Similar to /proc/sys/vm/swappiness, but affecting a hierarchy of groups only.
a7885eb8 469
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470Following cgroups' swappiness can't be changed.
471- root cgroup (uses /proc/sys/vm/swappiness).
472- a cgroup which uses hierarchy and it has other cgroup(s) below it.
473- a cgroup which uses hierarchy and not the root of hierarchy.
474
4755.4 failcnt
476
477A memory cgroup provides memory.failcnt and memory.memsw.failcnt files.
478This failcnt(== failure count) shows the number of times that a usage counter
479hit its limit. When a memory cgroup hits a limit, failcnt increases and
480memory under it will be reclaimed.
481
482You can reset failcnt by writing 0 to failcnt file.
483# echo 0 > .../memory.failcnt
a7885eb8 484
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4855.5 usage_in_bytes
486
487For efficiency, as other kernel components, memory cgroup uses some optimization
488to avoid unnecessary cacheline false sharing. usage_in_bytes is affected by the
489method and doesn't show 'exact' value of memory(and swap) usage, it's an fuzz
490value for efficient access. (Of course, when necessary, it's synchronized.)
491If you want to know more exact memory usage, you should use RSS+CACHE(+SWAP)
492value in memory.stat(see 5.2).
493
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4945.6 numa_stat
495
496This is similar to numa_maps but operates on a per-memcg basis. This is
497useful for providing visibility into the numa locality information within
498an memcg since the pages are allowed to be allocated from any physical
499node. One of the usecases is evaluating application performance by
500combining this information with the application's cpu allocation.
501
502We export "total", "file", "anon" and "unevictable" pages per-node for
503each memcg. The ouput format of memory.numa_stat is:
504
505total=<total pages> N0=<node 0 pages> N1=<node 1 pages> ...
506file=<total file pages> N0=<node 0 pages> N1=<node 1 pages> ...
507anon=<total anon pages> N0=<node 0 pages> N1=<node 1 pages> ...
508unevictable=<total anon pages> N0=<node 0 pages> N1=<node 1 pages> ...
509
510And we have total = file + anon + unevictable.
511
52bc0d82 5126. Hierarchy support
c1e862c1 513
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514The memory controller supports a deep hierarchy and hierarchical accounting.
515The hierarchy is created by creating the appropriate cgroups in the
516cgroup filesystem. Consider for example, the following cgroup filesystem
517hierarchy
518
67de0162 519 root
52bc0d82 520 / | \
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521 / | \
522 a b c
523 | \
524 | \
525 d e
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526
527In the diagram above, with hierarchical accounting enabled, all memory
528usage of e, is accounted to its ancestors up until the root (i.e, c and root),
dc10e281 529that has memory.use_hierarchy enabled. If one of the ancestors goes over its
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530limit, the reclaim algorithm reclaims from the tasks in the ancestor and the
531children of the ancestor.
532
5336.1 Enabling hierarchical accounting and reclaim
534
dc10e281 535A memory cgroup by default disables the hierarchy feature. Support
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536can be enabled by writing 1 to memory.use_hierarchy file of the root cgroup
537
538# echo 1 > memory.use_hierarchy
539
540The feature can be disabled by
541
542# echo 0 > memory.use_hierarchy
543
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544NOTE1: Enabling/disabling will fail if either the cgroup already has other
545 cgroups created below it, or if the parent cgroup has use_hierarchy
546 enabled.
52bc0d82 547
daaf1e68 548NOTE2: When panic_on_oom is set to "2", the whole system will panic in
dc10e281 549 case of an OOM event in any cgroup.
52bc0d82 550
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5517. Soft limits
552
553Soft limits allow for greater sharing of memory. The idea behind soft limits
554is to allow control groups to use as much of the memory as needed, provided
555
556a. There is no memory contention
557b. They do not exceed their hard limit
558
dc10e281 559When the system detects memory contention or low memory, control groups
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560are pushed back to their soft limits. If the soft limit of each control
561group is very high, they are pushed back as much as possible to make
562sure that one control group does not starve the others of memory.
563
564Please note that soft limits is a best effort feature, it comes with
565no guarantees, but it does its best to make sure that when memory is
566heavily contended for, memory is allocated based on the soft limit
567hints/setup. Currently soft limit based reclaim is setup such that
568it gets invoked from balance_pgdat (kswapd).
569
5707.1 Interface
571
572Soft limits can be setup by using the following commands (in this example we
dc10e281 573assume a soft limit of 256 MiB)
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574
575# echo 256M > memory.soft_limit_in_bytes
576
577If we want to change this to 1G, we can at any time use
578
579# echo 1G > memory.soft_limit_in_bytes
580
581NOTE1: Soft limits take effect over a long period of time, since they involve
582 reclaiming memory for balancing between memory cgroups
583NOTE2: It is recommended to set the soft limit always below the hard limit,
584 otherwise the hard limit will take precedence.
585
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5868. Move charges at task migration
587
588Users can move charges associated with a task along with task migration, that
589is, uncharge task's pages from the old cgroup and charge them to the new cgroup.
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590This feature is not supported in !CONFIG_MMU environments because of lack of
591page tables.
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592
5938.1 Interface
594
595This feature is disabled by default. It can be enabled(and disabled again) by
596writing to memory.move_charge_at_immigrate of the destination cgroup.
597
598If you want to enable it:
599
600# echo (some positive value) > memory.move_charge_at_immigrate
601
602Note: Each bits of move_charge_at_immigrate has its own meaning about what type
603 of charges should be moved. See 8.2 for details.
604Note: Charges are moved only when you move mm->owner, IOW, a leader of a thread
605 group.
606Note: If we cannot find enough space for the task in the destination cgroup, we
607 try to make space by reclaiming memory. Task migration may fail if we
608 cannot make enough space.
dc10e281 609Note: It can take several seconds if you move charges much.
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610
611And if you want disable it again:
612
613# echo 0 > memory.move_charge_at_immigrate
614
6158.2 Type of charges which can be move
616
617Each bits of move_charge_at_immigrate has its own meaning about what type of
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618charges should be moved. But in any cases, it must be noted that an account of
619a page or a swap can be moved only when it is charged to the task's current(old)
620memory cgroup.
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621
622 bit | what type of charges would be moved ?
623 -----+------------------------------------------------------------------------
624 0 | A charge of an anonymous page(or swap of it) used by the target task.
4b91355e 625 | You must enable Swap Extension(see 2.4) to enable move of swap charges.
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626 -----+------------------------------------------------------------------------
627 1 | A charge of file pages(normal file, tmpfs file(e.g. ipc shared memory)
dc10e281 628 | and swaps of tmpfs file) mmapped by the target task. Unlike the case of
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629 | anonymous pages, file pages(and swaps) in the range mmapped by the task
630 | will be moved even if the task hasn't done page fault, i.e. they might
631 | not be the task's "RSS", but other task's "RSS" that maps the same file.
632 | And mapcount of the page is ignored(the page can be moved even if
633 | page_mapcount(page) > 1). You must enable Swap Extension(see 2.4) to
634 | enable move of swap charges.
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635
6368.3 TODO
637
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638- All of moving charge operations are done under cgroup_mutex. It's not good
639 behavior to hold the mutex too long, so we may need some trick.
640
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6419. Memory thresholds
642
dc10e281 643Memory cgroup implements memory thresholds using cgroups notification
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644API (see cgroups.txt). It allows to register multiple memory and memsw
645thresholds and gets notifications when it crosses.
646
647To register a threshold application need:
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648- create an eventfd using eventfd(2);
649- open memory.usage_in_bytes or memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes;
650- write string like "<event_fd> <fd of memory.usage_in_bytes> <threshold>" to
651 cgroup.event_control.
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652
653Application will be notified through eventfd when memory usage crosses
654threshold in any direction.
655
656It's applicable for root and non-root cgroup.
657
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65810. OOM Control
659
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660memory.oom_control file is for OOM notification and other controls.
661
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662Memory cgroup implements OOM notifier using cgroup notification
663API (See cgroups.txt). It allows to register multiple OOM notification
664delivery and gets notification when OOM happens.
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665
666To register a notifier, application need:
667 - create an eventfd using eventfd(2)
668 - open memory.oom_control file
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669 - write string like "<event_fd> <fd of memory.oom_control>" to
670 cgroup.event_control
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dc10e281 672Application will be notified through eventfd when OOM happens.
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673OOM notification doesn't work for root cgroup.
674
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675You can disable OOM-killer by writing "1" to memory.oom_control file, as:
676
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677 #echo 1 > memory.oom_control
678
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679This operation is only allowed to the top cgroup of sub-hierarchy.
680If OOM-killer is disabled, tasks under cgroup will hang/sleep
681in memory cgroup's OOM-waitqueue when they request accountable memory.
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dc10e281 683For running them, you have to relax the memory cgroup's OOM status by
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684 * enlarge limit or reduce usage.
685To reduce usage,
686 * kill some tasks.
687 * move some tasks to other group with account migration.
688 * remove some files (on tmpfs?)
689
690Then, stopped tasks will work again.
691
692At reading, current status of OOM is shown.
693 oom_kill_disable 0 or 1 (if 1, oom-killer is disabled)
dc10e281 694 under_oom 0 or 1 (if 1, the memory cgroup is under OOM, tasks may
3c11ecf4 695 be stopped.)
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696
69711. TODO
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698
6991. Add support for accounting huge pages (as a separate controller)
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7002. Make per-cgroup scanner reclaim not-shared pages first
7013. Teach controller to account for shared-pages
628f4235 7024. Start reclamation in the background when the limit is
1b6df3aa 703 not yet hit but the usage is getting closer
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704
705Summary
706
707Overall, the memory controller has been a stable controller and has been
708commented and discussed quite extensively in the community.
709
710References
711
7121. Singh, Balbir. RFC: Memory Controller, http://lwn.net/Articles/206697/
7132. Singh, Balbir. Memory Controller (RSS Control),
714 http://lwn.net/Articles/222762/
7153. Emelianov, Pavel. Resource controllers based on process cgroups
716 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/3/6/198
7174. Emelianov, Pavel. RSS controller based on process cgroups (v2)
2324c5dd 718 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/4/9/78
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7195. Emelianov, Pavel. RSS controller based on process cgroups (v3)
720 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/30/244
7216. Menage, Paul. Control Groups v10, http://lwn.net/Articles/236032/
7227. Vaidyanathan, Srinivasan, Control Groups: Pagecache accounting and control
723 subsystem (v3), http://lwn.net/Articles/235534/
2324c5dd 7248. Singh, Balbir. RSS controller v2 test results (lmbench),
1b6df3aa 725 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/17/232
2324c5dd 7269. Singh, Balbir. RSS controller v2 AIM9 results
1b6df3aa 727 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/18/1
2324c5dd 72810. Singh, Balbir. Memory controller v6 test results,
1b6df3aa 729 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/19/36
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73011. Singh, Balbir. Memory controller introduction (v6),
731 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/17/69
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73212. Corbet, Jonathan, Controlling memory use in cgroups,
733 http://lwn.net/Articles/243795/