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-rw-r--r--Documentation/cgroups.txt526
-rw-r--r--include/linux/cgroup.h214
-rw-r--r--include/linux/cgroup_subsys.h10
-rw-r--r--include/linux/magic.h1
-rw-r--r--include/linux/sched.h34
-rw-r--r--init/Kconfig8
-rw-r--r--init/main.c3
-rw-r--r--kernel/Makefile1
-rw-r--r--kernel/cgroup.c1198
9 files changed, 1994 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/cgroups.txt b/Documentation/cgroups.txt
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1 CGROUPS
2 -------
3
4Written by Paul Menage <menage@google.com> based on Documentation/cpusets.txt
5
6Original copyright statements from cpusets.txt:
7Portions Copyright (C) 2004 BULL SA.
8Portions Copyright (c) 2004-2006 Silicon Graphics, Inc.
9Modified by Paul Jackson <pj@sgi.com>
10Modified by Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
11
12CONTENTS:
13=========
14
151. Control Groups
16 1.1 What are cgroups ?
17 1.2 Why are cgroups needed ?
18 1.3 How are cgroups implemented ?
19 1.4 What does notify_on_release do ?
20 1.5 How do I use cgroups ?
212. Usage Examples and Syntax
22 2.1 Basic Usage
23 2.2 Attaching processes
243. Kernel API
25 3.1 Overview
26 3.2 Synchronization
27 3.3 Subsystem API
284. Questions
29
301. Control Groups
31==========
32
331.1 What are cgroups ?
34----------------------
35
36Control Groups provide a mechanism for aggregating/partitioning sets of
37tasks, and all their future children, into hierarchical groups with
38specialized behaviour.
39
40Definitions:
41
42A *cgroup* associates a set of tasks with a set of parameters for one
43or more subsystems.
44
45A *subsystem* is a module that makes use of the task grouping
46facilities provided by cgroups to treat groups of tasks in
47particular ways. A subsystem is typically a "resource controller" that
48schedules a resource or applies per-cgroup limits, but it may be
49anything that wants to act on a group of processes, e.g. a
50virtualization subsystem.
51
52A *hierarchy* is a set of cgroups arranged in a tree, such that
53every task in the system is in exactly one of the cgroups in the
54hierarchy, and a set of subsystems; each subsystem has system-specific
55state attached to each cgroup in the hierarchy. Each hierarchy has
56an instance of the cgroup virtual filesystem associated with it.
57
58At any one time there may be multiple active hierachies of task
59cgroups. Each hierarchy is a partition of all tasks in the system.
60
61User level code may create and destroy cgroups by name in an
62instance of the cgroup virtual file system, specify and query to
63which cgroup a task is assigned, and list the task pids assigned to
64a cgroup. Those creations and assignments only affect the hierarchy
65associated with that instance of the cgroup file system.
66
67On their own, the only use for cgroups is for simple job
68tracking. The intention is that other subsystems hook into the generic
69cgroup support to provide new attributes for cgroups, such as
70accounting/limiting the resources which processes in a cgroup can
71access. For example, cpusets (see Documentation/cpusets.txt) allows
72you to associate a set of CPUs and a set of memory nodes with the
73tasks in each cgroup.
74
751.2 Why are cgroups needed ?
76----------------------------
77
78There are multiple efforts to provide process aggregations in the
79Linux kernel, mainly for resource tracking purposes. Such efforts
80include cpusets, CKRM/ResGroups, UserBeanCounters, and virtual server
81namespaces. These all require the basic notion of a
82grouping/partitioning of processes, with newly forked processes ending
83in the same group (cgroup) as their parent process.
84
85The kernel cgroup patch provides the minimum essential kernel
86mechanisms required to efficiently implement such groups. It has
87minimal impact on the system fast paths, and provides hooks for
88specific subsystems such as cpusets to provide additional behaviour as
89desired.
90
91Multiple hierarchy support is provided to allow for situations where
92the division of tasks into cgroups is distinctly different for
93different subsystems - having parallel hierarchies allows each
94hierarchy to be a natural division of tasks, without having to handle
95complex combinations of tasks that would be present if several
96unrelated subsystems needed to be forced into the same tree of
97cgroups.
98
99At one extreme, each resource controller or subsystem could be in a
100separate hierarchy; at the other extreme, all subsystems
101would be attached to the same hierarchy.
102
103As an example of a scenario (originally proposed by vatsa@in.ibm.com)
104that can benefit from multiple hierarchies, consider a large
105university server with various users - students, professors, system
106tasks etc. The resource planning for this server could be along the
107following lines:
108
109 CPU : Top cpuset
110 / \
111 CPUSet1 CPUSet2
112 | |
113 (Profs) (Students)
114
115 In addition (system tasks) are attached to topcpuset (so
116 that they can run anywhere) with a limit of 20%
117
118 Memory : Professors (50%), students (30%), system (20%)
119
120 Disk : Prof (50%), students (30%), system (20%)
121
122 Network : WWW browsing (20%), Network File System (60%), others (20%)
123 / \
124 Prof (15%) students (5%)
125
126Browsers like firefox/lynx go into the WWW network class, while (k)nfsd go
127into NFS network class.
128
129At the same time firefox/lynx will share an appropriate CPU/Memory class
130depending on who launched it (prof/student).
131
132With the ability to classify tasks differently for different resources
133(by putting those resource subsystems in different hierarchies) then
134the admin can easily set up a script which receives exec notifications
135and depending on who is launching the browser he can
136
137 # echo browser_pid > /mnt/<restype>/<userclass>/tasks
138
139With only a single hierarchy, he now would potentially have to create
140a separate cgroup for every browser launched and associate it with
141approp network and other resource class. This may lead to
142proliferation of such cgroups.
143
144Also lets say that the administrator would like to give enhanced network
145access temporarily to a student's browser (since it is night and the user
146wants to do online gaming :) OR give one of the students simulation
147apps enhanced CPU power,
148
149With ability to write pids directly to resource classes, its just a
150matter of :
151
152 # echo pid > /mnt/network/<new_class>/tasks
153 (after some time)
154 # echo pid > /mnt/network/<orig_class>/tasks
155
156Without this ability, he would have to split the cgroup into
157multiple separate ones and then associate the new cgroups with the
158new resource classes.
159
160
161
1621.3 How are cgroups implemented ?
163---------------------------------
164
165Control Groups extends the kernel as follows:
166
167 - Each task in the system has a reference-counted pointer to a
168 css_set.
169
170 - A css_set contains a set of reference-counted pointers to
171 cgroup_subsys_state objects, one for each cgroup subsystem
172 registered in the system. There is no direct link from a task to
173 the cgroup of which it's a member in each hierarchy, but this
174 can be determined by following pointers through the
175 cgroup_subsys_state objects. This is because accessing the
176 subsystem state is something that's expected to happen frequently
177 and in performance-critical code, whereas operations that require a
178 task's actual cgroup assignments (in particular, moving between
179 cgroups) are less common.
180
181 - A cgroup hierarchy filesystem can be mounted for browsing and
182 manipulation from user space.
183
184 - You can list all the tasks (by pid) attached to any cgroup.
185
186The implementation of cgroups requires a few, simple hooks
187into the rest of the kernel, none in performance critical paths:
188
189 - in init/main.c, to initial