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+Memory Resource Controller
+
+NOTE: The Memory Resource Controller has been generically been referred
+to as the memory controller in this document. Do not confuse memory controller
+used here with the memory controller that is used in hardware.
+
+Salient features
+
+a. Enable control of both RSS (mapped) and Page Cache (unmapped) pages
+b. The infrastructure allows easy addition of other types of memory to control
+c. Provides *zero overhead* for non memory controller users
+d. Provides a double LRU: global memory pressure causes reclaim from the
+   global LRU; a cgroup on hitting a limit, reclaims from the per
+   cgroup LRU
+
+NOTE: Swap Cache (unmapped) is not accounted now.
+
+Benefits and Purpose of the memory controller
+
+The memory controller isolates the memory behaviour of a group of tasks
+from the rest of the system. The article on LWN [12] mentions some probable
+uses of the memory controller. The memory controller can be used to
+
+a. Isolate an application or a group of applications
+   Memory hungry applications can be isolated and limited to a smaller
+   amount of memory.
+b. Create a cgroup with limited amount of memory, this can be used
+   as a good alternative to booting with mem=XXXX.
+c. Virtualization solutions can control the amount of memory they want
+   to assign to a virtual machine instance.
+d. A CD/DVD burner could control the amount of memory used by the
+   rest of the system to ensure that burning does not fail due to lack
+   of available memory.
+e. There are several other use cases, find one or use the controller just
+   for fun (to learn and hack on the VM subsystem).
+
+1. History
+
+The memory controller has a long history. A request for comments for the memory
+controller was posted by Balbir Singh [1]. At the time the RFC was posted
+there were several implementations for memory control. The goal of the
+RFC was to build consensus and agreement for the minimal features required
+for memory control. The first RSS controller was posted by Balbir Singh[2]
+in Feb 2007. Pavel Emelianov [3][4][5] has since posted three versions of the
+RSS controller. At OLS, at the resource management BoF, everyone suggested
+that we handle both page cache and RSS together. Another request was raised
+to allow user space handling of OOM. The current memory controller is
+at version 6; it combines both mapped (RSS) and unmapped Page
+Cache Control [11].
+
+2. Memory Control
+
+Memory is a unique resource in the sense that it is present in a limited
+amount. If a task requires a lot of CPU processing, the task can spread
+its processing over a period of hours, days, months or years, but with
+memory, the same physical memory needs to be reused to accomplish the task.
+
+The memory controller implementation has been divided into phases. These
+are:
+
+1. Memory controller
+2. mlock(2) controller
+3. Kernel user memory accounting and slab control
+4. user mappings length controller
+
+The memory controller is the first controller developed.
+
+2.1. Design
+
+The core of the design is a counter called the res_counter. The res_counter
+tracks the current memory usage and limit of the group of processes associated
+with the controller. Each cgroup has a memory controller specific data
+structure (mem_cgroup) associated with it.
+
+2.2. Accounting
+
+                +--------------------+
+                |  mem_cgroup     |
+                |  (res_counter)     |
+                +--------------------+
+                 /            ^      \
+                /             |       \
+           +---------------+  |        +---------------+
+           | mm_struct     |  |....    | mm_struct     |
+           |               |  |        |               |
+           +---------------+  |        +---------------+
+                              |
+                              + --------------+
+                                              |
+           +---------------+           +------+--------+
+           | page          +---------->  page_cgroup|
+           |               |           |               |
+           +---------------+           +---------------+
+
+             (Figure 1: Hierarchy of Accounting)
+
+
+Figure 1 shows the important aspects of the controller
+
+1. Accounting happens per cgroup
+2. Each mm_struct knows about which cgroup it belongs to
+3. Each page has a pointer to the page_cgroup, which in turn knows the
+   cgroup it belongs to
+
+The accounting is done as follows: mem_cgroup_charge() is invoked to setup
+the necessary data structures and check if the cgroup that is being charged
+is over its limit. If it is then reclaim is invoked on the cgroup.
+More details can be found in the reclaim section of this document.
+If everything goes well, a page meta-data-structure called page_cgroup is
+allocated and associated with the page.  This routine also adds the page to
+the per cgroup LRU.
+
+2.2.1 Accounting details
+
+All mapped anon pages (RSS) and cache pages (Page Cache) are accounted.
+(some pages which never be reclaimable and will not be on global LRU
+ are not accounted. we just accounts pages under usual vm management.)
+
+RSS pages are accounted at page_fault unless they've already been accounted
+for earlier. A file page will be accounted for as Page Cache when it's
+inserted into inode (radix-tree). While it's mapped into the page tables of
+processes, duplicate accounting is carefully avoided.
+
+A RSS page is unaccounted when it's fully unmapped. A PageCache page is
+unaccounted when it's removed from radix-tree.
+
+At page migration, accounting information is kept.
+
+Note: we just account pages-on-lru because our purpose is to control amount
+of used pages. not-on-lru pages are tend to be out-of-control from vm view.
+
+2.3 Shared Page Accounting
+
+Shared pages are accounted on the basis of the first touch approach. The
+cgroup that first touches a page is accounted for the page. The principle
+behind this approach is that a cgroup that aggressively uses a shared
+page will eventually get charged for it (once it is uncharged from
+the cgroup that brought it in -- this will happen on memory pressure).
+
+Exception: If CONFIG_CGROUP_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR_SWAP is not used..
+When you do swapoff and make swapped-out pages of shmem(tmpfs) to
+be backed into memory in force, charges for pages are accounted against the
+caller of swapoff rather than the users of shmem.
+
+
+2.4 Swap Extension (CONFIG_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR_SWAP)
+Swap Extension allows you to record charge for swap. A swapped-in page is
+charged back to original page allocator if possible.
+
+When swap is accounted, following files are added.
+ - memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes.
+ - memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes.
+
+usage of mem+swap is limited by memsw.limit_in_bytes.
+
+Note: why 'mem+swap' rather than swap.
+The global LRU(kswapd) can swap out arbitrary pages. Swap-out means
+to move account from memory to swap...there is no change in usage of
+mem+swap.
+
+In other words, when we want to limit the usage of swap without affecting
+global LRU, mem+swap limit is better than just limiting swap from OS point
+of view.
+
+2.5 Reclaim
+
+Each cgroup maintains a per cgroup LRU that consists of an active
+and inactive list. When a cgroup goes over its limit, we first try
+to reclaim memory from the cgroup so as to make space for the new
+pages that the cgroup has touched. If the reclaim is unsuccessful,
+an OOM routine is invoked to select and kill the bulkiest task in the
+cgroup.
+
+The reclaim algorithm has not been modified for cgroups, except that
+pages that are selected for reclaiming come from the per cgroup LRU
+list.
+
+2. Locking
+
+The memory controller uses the following hierarchy
+
+1. zone->lru_lock is used for selecting pages to be isolated
+2. mem->per_zone->lru_lock protects the per cgroup LRU (per zone)
+3. lock_page_cgroup() is used to protect page->page_cgroup
+
+3. User Interface
+
+0. Configuration
+
+a. Enable CONFIG_CGROUPS
+b. Enable CONFIG_RESOURCE_COUNTERS
+c. Enable CONFIG_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR
+
+1. Prepare the cgroups
+# mkdir -p /cgroups
+# mount -t cgroup none /cgroups -o memory
+
+2. Make the new group and move bash into it
+# mkdir /cgroups/0
+# echo $$ >  /cgroups/0/tasks
+
+Since now we're in the 0 cgroup,
+We can alter the memory limit:
+# echo 4M > /cgroups/0/memory.limit_in_bytes
+
+NOTE: We can use a suffix (k, K, m, M, g or G) to indicate values in kilo,
+mega or gigabytes.
+
+# cat /cgroups/0/memory.limit_in_bytes
+4194304
+
+NOTE: The interface has now changed to display the usage in bytes
+instead of pages
+
+We can check the usage:
+# cat /cgroups/0/memory.usage_in_bytes
+1216512
+
+A successful write to this file does not guarantee a successful set of
+this limit to the value written into the file.  This can be due to a
+number of factors, such as rounding up to page boundaries or the total
+availability of memory on the system.  The user is required to re-read
+this file after a write to guarantee the value committed by the kernel.
+
+# echo 1 > memory.limit_in_bytes
+# cat memory.limit_in_bytes
+4096
+
+The memory.failcnt field gives the number of times that the cgroup limit was
+exceeded.
+
+The memory.stat file gives accounting information. Now, the number of
+caches, RSS and Active pages/Inactive pages are shown.
+
+4. Testing
+
+Balbir posted lmbench, AIM9, LTP and vmmstress results [10] and [11].
+Apart from that v6 has been tested with several applications and regular
+daily use. The controller has also been tested on the PPC64, x86_64 and
+UML platforms.
+
+4.1 Troubleshooting
+
+Sometimes a user might find that the application under a cgroup is
+terminated. There are several causes for this:
+
+1. The cgroup limit is too low (just too low to do anything useful)
+2. The user is using anonymous memory and swap is turned off or too low
+
+A sync followed by echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches will help get rid of
+some of the pages cached in the cgroup (page cache pages).
+
+4.2 Task migration
+
+When a task migrates from one cgroup to another, it's charge is not
+carried forward. The pages allocated from the original cgroup still
+remain charged to it, the charge is dropped when the page is freed or
+reclaimed.
+
+4.3 Removing a cgroup
+
+A cgroup can be removed by rmdir, but as discussed in sections 4.1 and 4.2, a
+cgroup might have some charge associated with it, even though all
+tasks have migrated away from it.
+Such charges are freed(at default) or moved to its parent. When moved,
+both of RSS and CACHES are moved to parent.
+If both of them are busy, rmdir() returns -EBUSY. See 5.1 Also.
+
+Charges recorded in swap information is not updated at removal of cgroup.
+Recorded information is discarded and a cgroup which uses swap (swapcache)
+will be charged as a new owner of it.
+
+
+5. Misc. interfaces.
+
+5.1 force_empty
+  memory.force_empty interface is provided to make cgroup's memory usage empty.
+  You can use this interface only when the cgroup has no tasks.
+  When writing anything to this
+
+  # echo 0 > memory.force_empty
+
+  Almost all pages tracked by this memcg will be unmapped and freed. Some of
+  pages cannot be freed because it's locked or in-use. Such pages are moved
+  to parent and this cgroup will be empty. But this may return -EBUSY in
+  some too busy case.
+
+  Typical use case of this interface is that calling this before rmdir().
+  Because rmdir() moves all pages to parent, some out-of-use page caches can be
+  moved to the parent. If you want to avoid that, force_empty will be useful.
+
+5.2 stat file
+  memory.stat file includes following statistics (now)
+        cache                   - # of pages from page-cache and shmem.
+        rss                     - # of pages from anonymous memory.
+        pgpgin                  - # of event of charging
+        pgpgout                 - # of event of uncharging
+        active_anon             - # of pages on active lru of anon, shmem.
+        inactive_anon           - # of pages on active lru of anon, shmem
+        active_file             - # of pages on active lru of file-cache
+        inactive_file           - # of pages on inactive lru of file cache
+        unevictable             - # of pages cannot be reclaimed.(mlocked etc)
+
+        Below is depend on CONFIG_DEBUG_VM.
+        inactive_ratio          - VM inernal parameter. (see mm/page_alloc.c)
+        recent_rotated_anon     - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
+        recent_rotated_file     - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
+        recent_scanned_anon     - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
+        recent_scanned_file     - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
+
+  Memo:
+        recent_rotated means recent frequency of lru rotation.
+        recent_scanned means recent # of scans to lru.
+        showing for better debug please see the code for meanings.
+
+
+5.3 swappiness
+  Similar to /proc/sys/vm/swappiness, but affecting a hierarchy of groups only.
+
+  Following cgroup's swapiness can't be changed.
+  - root cgroup (uses /proc/sys/vm/swappiness).
+  - a cgroup which uses hierarchy and it has child cgroup.
+  - a cgroup which uses hierarchy and not the root of hierarchy.
+
+
+6. Hierarchy support
+
+The memory controller supports a deep hierarchy and hierarchical accounting.
+The hierarchy is created by creating the appropriate cgroups in the
+cgroup filesystem. Consider for example, the following cgroup filesystem
+hierarchy
+
+                root
+             /  |   \
+           /    |    \
+          a     b       c
+                        | \
+                        |  \
+                        d   e
+
+In the diagram above, with hierarchical accounting enabled, all memory
+usage of e, is accounted to its ancestors up until the root (i.e, c and root),
+that has memory.use_hierarchy enabled.  If one of the ancestors goes over its
+limit, the reclaim algorithm reclaims from the tasks in the ancestor and the
+children of the ancestor.
+
+6.1 Enabling hierarchical accounting and reclaim
+
+The memory controller by default disables the hierarchy feature. Support
+can be enabled by writing 1 to memory.use_hierarchy file of the root cgroup
+
+# echo 1 > memory.use_hierarchy
+
+The feature can be disabled by
+
+# echo 0 > memory.use_hierarchy
+
+NOTE1: Enabling/disabling will fail if the cgroup already has other
+cgroups created below it.
+
+NOTE2: This feature can be enabled/disabled per subtree.
+
+7. TODO
+
+1. Add support for accounting huge pages (as a separate controller)
+2. Make per-cgroup scanner reclaim not-shared pages first
+3. Teach controller to account for shared-pages
+4. Start reclamation in the background when the limit is
+   not yet hit but the usage is getting closer
+
+Summary
+
+Overall, the memory controller has been a stable controller and has been
+commented and discussed quite extensively in the community.
+
+References
+
+1. Singh, Balbir. RFC: Memory Controller, http://lwn.net/Articles/206697/
+2. Singh, Balbir. Memory Controller (RSS Control),
+   http://lwn.net/Articles/222762/
+3. Emelianov, Pavel. Resource controllers based on process cgroups
+   http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/3/6/198
+4. Emelianov, Pavel. RSS controller based on process cgroups (v2)
+   http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/4/9/78
+5. Emelianov, Pavel. RSS controller based on process cgroups (v3)
+   http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/30/244
+6. Menage, Paul. Control Groups v10, http://lwn.net/Articles/236032/
+7. Vaidyanathan, Srinivasan, Control Groups: Pagecache accounting and control
+   subsystem (v3), http://lwn.net/Articles/235534/
+8. Singh, Balbir. RSS controller v2 test results (lmbench),
+   http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/17/232
+9. Singh, Balbir. RSS controller v2 AIM9 results
+   http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/18/1
+10. Singh, Balbir. Memory controller v6 test results,
+    http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/19/36
+11. Singh, Balbir. Memory controller introduction (v6),
+    http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/17/69
+12. Corbet, Jonathan, Controlling memory use in cgroups,
+    http://lwn.net/Articles/243795/