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1 | Memory Controller | ||
2 | |||
3 | Salient features | ||
4 | |||
5 | a. Enable control of both RSS (mapped) and Page Cache (unmapped) pages | ||
6 | b. The infrastructure allows easy addition of other types of memory to control | ||
7 | c. Provides *zero overhead* for non memory controller users | ||
8 | d. Provides a double LRU: global memory pressure causes reclaim from the | ||
9 | global LRU; a cgroup on hitting a limit, reclaims from the per | ||
10 | cgroup LRU | ||
11 | |||
12 | NOTE: Page Cache (unmapped) also includes Swap Cache pages as a subset | ||
13 | and will not be referred to explicitly in the rest of the documentation. | ||
14 | |||
15 | Benefits and Purpose of the memory controller | ||
16 | |||
17 | The memory controller isolates the memory behaviour of a group of tasks | ||
18 | from the rest of the system. The article on LWN [12] mentions some probable | ||
19 | uses of the memory controller. The memory controller can be used to | ||
20 | |||
21 | a. Isolate an application or a group of applications | ||
22 | Memory hungry applications can be isolated and limited to a smaller | ||
23 | amount of memory. | ||
24 | b. Create a cgroup with limited amount of memory, this can be used | ||
25 | as a good alternative to booting with mem=XXXX. | ||
26 | c. Virtualization solutions can control the amount of memory they want | ||
27 | to assign to a virtual machine instance. | ||
28 | d. A CD/DVD burner could control the amount of memory used by the | ||
29 | rest of the system to ensure that burning does not fail due to lack | ||
30 | of available memory. | ||
31 | e. There are several other use cases, find one or use the controller just | ||
32 | for fun (to learn and hack on the VM subsystem). | ||
33 | |||
34 | 1. History | ||
35 | |||
36 | The memory controller has a long history. A request for comments for the memory | ||
37 | controller was posted by Balbir Singh [1]. At the time the RFC was posted | ||
38 | there were several implementations for memory control. The goal of the | ||
39 | RFC was to build consensus and agreement for the minimal features required | ||
40 | for memory control. The first RSS controller was posted by Balbir Singh[2] | ||
41 | in Feb 2007. Pavel Emelianov [3][4][5] has since posted three versions of the | ||
42 | RSS controller. At OLS, at the resource management BoF, everyone suggested | ||
43 | that we handle both page cache and RSS together. Another request was raised | ||
44 | to allow user space handling of OOM. The current memory controller is | ||
45 | at version 6; it combines both mapped (RSS) and unmapped Page | ||
46 | Cache Control [11]. | ||
47 | |||
48 | 2. Memory Control | ||
49 | |||
50 | Memory is a unique resource in the sense that it is present in a limited | ||
51 | amount. If a task requires a lot of CPU processing, the task can spread | ||
52 | its processing over a period of hours, days, months or years, but with | ||
53 | memory, the same physical memory needs to be reused to accomplish the task. | ||
54 | |||
55 | The memory controller implementation has been divided into phases. These | ||
56 | are: | ||
57 | |||
58 | 1. Memory controller | ||
59 | 2. mlock(2) controller | ||
60 | 3. Kernel user memory accounting and slab control | ||
61 | 4. user mappings length controller | ||
62 | |||
63 | The memory controller is the first controller developed. | ||
64 | |||
65 | 2.1. Design | ||
66 | |||
67 | The core of the design is a counter called the res_counter. The res_counter | ||
68 | tracks the current memory usage and limit of the group of processes associated | ||
69 | with the controller. Each cgroup has a memory controller specific data | ||
70 | structure (mem_cgroup) associated with it. | ||
71 | |||
72 | 2.2. Accounting | ||
73 | |||
74 | +--------------------+ | ||
75 | | mem_cgroup | | ||
76 | | (res_counter) | | ||
77 | +--------------------+ | ||
78 | / ^ \ | ||
79 | / | \ | ||
80 | +---------------+ | +---------------+ | ||
81 | | mm_struct | |.... | mm_struct | | ||
82 | | | | | | | ||
83 | +---------------+ | +---------------+ | ||
84 | | | ||
85 | + --------------+ | ||
86 | | | ||
87 | +---------------+ +------+--------+ | ||
88 | | page +----------> page_cgroup| | ||
89 | | | | | | ||
90 | +---------------+ +---------------+ | ||
91 | |||
92 | (Figure 1: Hierarchy of Accounting) | ||
93 | |||
94 | |||
95 | Figure 1 shows the important aspects of the controller | ||
96 | |||
97 | 1. Accounting happens per cgroup | ||
98 | 2. Each mm_struct knows about which cgroup it belongs to | ||
99 | 3. Each page has a pointer to the page_cgroup, which in turn knows the | ||
100 | cgroup it belongs to | ||
101 | |||
102 | The accounting is done as follows: mem_cgroup_charge() is invoked to setup | ||
103 | the necessary data structures and check if the cgroup that is being charged | ||
104 | is over its limit. If it is then reclaim is invoked on the cgroup. | ||
105 | More details can be found in the reclaim section of this document. | ||
106 | If everything goes well, a page meta-data-structure called page_cgroup is | ||
107 | allocated and associated with the page. This routine also adds the page to | ||
108 | the per cgroup LRU. | ||
109 | |||
110 | 2.2.1 Accounting details | ||
111 | |||
112 | All mapped pages (RSS) and unmapped user pages (Page Cache) are accounted. | ||
113 | RSS pages are accounted at the time of page_add_*_rmap() unless they've already | ||
114 | been accounted for earlier. A file page will be accounted for as Page Cache; | ||
115 | it's mapped into the page tables of a process, duplicate accounting is carefully | ||
116 | avoided. Page Cache pages are accounted at the time of add_to_page_cache(). | ||
117 | The corresponding routines that remove a page from the page tables or removes | ||
118 | a page from Page Cache is used to decrement the accounting counters of the | ||
119 | cgroup. | ||
120 | |||
121 | 2.3 Shared Page Accounting | ||
122 | |||
123 | Shared pages are accounted on the basis of the first touch approach. The | ||
124 | cgroup that first touches a page is accounted for the page. The principle | ||
125 | behind this approach is that a cgroup that aggressively uses a shared | ||
126 | page will eventually get charged for it (once it is uncharged from | ||
127 | the cgroup that brought it in -- this will happen on memory pressure). | ||
128 | |||
129 | 2.4 Reclaim | ||
130 | |||
131 | Each cgroup maintains a per cgroup LRU that consists of an active | ||
132 | and inactive list. When a cgroup goes over its limit, we first try | ||
133 | to reclaim memory from the cgroup so as to make space for the new | ||
134 | pages that the cgroup has touched. If the reclaim is unsuccessful, | ||
135 | an OOM routine is invoked to select and kill the bulkiest task in the | ||
136 | cgroup. | ||
137 | |||
138 | The reclaim algorithm has not been modified for cgroups, except that | ||
139 | pages that are selected for reclaiming come from the per cgroup LRU | ||
140 | list. | ||
141 | |||
142 | 2. Locking | ||
143 | |||
144 | The memory controller uses the following hierarchy | ||
145 | |||
146 | 1. zone->lru_lock is used for selecting pages to be isolated | ||
147 | 2. mem->lru_lock protects the per cgroup LRU | ||
148 | 3. lock_page_cgroup() is used to protect page->page_cgroup | ||
149 | |||
150 | 3. User Interface | ||
151 | |||
152 | 0. Configuration | ||
153 | |||
154 | a. Enable CONFIG_CGROUPS | ||
155 | b. Enable CONFIG_RESOURCE_COUNTERS | ||
156 | c. Enable CONFIG_CGROUP_MEM_CONT | ||
157 | |||
158 | 1. Prepare the cgroups | ||
159 | # mkdir -p /cgroups | ||
160 | # mount -t cgroup none /cgroups -o memory | ||
161 | |||
162 | 2. Make the new group and move bash into it | ||
163 | # mkdir /cgroups/0 | ||
164 | # echo $$ > /cgroups/0/tasks | ||
165 | |||
166 | Since now we're in the 0 cgroup, | ||
167 | We can alter the memory limit: | ||
168 | # echo -n 6000 > /cgroups/0/memory.limit | ||
169 | |||
170 | We can check the usage: | ||
171 | # cat /cgroups/0/memory.usage | ||
172 | 25 | ||
173 | |||
174 | The memory.failcnt field gives the number of times that the cgroup limit was | ||
175 | exceeded. | ||
176 | |||
177 | 4. Testing | ||
178 | |||
179 | Balbir posted lmbench, AIM9, LTP and vmmstress results [10] and [11]. | ||
180 | Apart from that v6 has been tested with several applications and regular | ||
181 | daily use. The controller has also been tested on the PPC64, x86_64 and | ||
182 | UML platforms. | ||
183 | |||
184 | 4.1 Troubleshooting | ||
185 | |||
186 | Sometimes a user might find that the application under a cgroup is | ||
187 | terminated. There are several causes for this: | ||
188 | |||
189 | 1. The cgroup limit is too low (just too low to do anything useful) | ||
190 | 2. The user is using anonymous memory and swap is turned off or too low | ||
191 | |||
192 | A sync followed by echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches will help get rid of | ||
193 | some of the pages cached in the cgroup (page cache pages). | ||
194 | |||
195 | 4.2 Task migration | ||
196 | |||
197 | When a task migrates from one cgroup to another, it's charge is not | ||
198 | carried forward. The pages allocated from the original cgroup still | ||
199 | remain charged to it, the charge is dropped when the page is freed or | ||
200 | reclaimed. | ||
201 | |||
202 | 4.3 Removing a cgroup | ||
203 | |||
204 | A cgroup can be removed by rmdir, but as discussed in sections 4.1 and 4.2, a | ||
205 | cgroup might have some charge associated with it, even though all | ||
206 | tasks have migrated away from it. If some pages are still left, after following | ||
207 | the steps listed in sections 4.1 and 4.2, check the Swap Cache usage in | ||
208 | /proc/meminfo to see if the Swap Cache usage is showing up in the | ||
209 | cgroups memory.usage counter. A simple test of swapoff -a and swapon -a | ||
210 | should free any pending Swap Cache usage. | ||
211 | |||
212 | 4.4 Choosing what to account -- Page Cache (unmapped) vs RSS (mapped)? | ||
213 | |||
214 | The type of memory accounted by the cgroup can be limited to just | ||
215 | mapped pages by writing "1" to memory.control_type field | ||
216 | |||
217 | echo -n 1 > memory.control_type | ||
218 | |||
219 | 5. TODO | ||
220 | |||
221 | 1. Add support for accounting huge pages (as a separate controller) | ||
222 | 2. Improve the user interface to accept/display memory limits in KB or MB | ||
223 | rather than pages (since page sizes can differ across platforms/machines). | ||
224 | 3. Make cgroup lists per-zone | ||
225 | 4. Make per-cgroup scanner reclaim not-shared pages first | ||
226 | 5. Teach controller to account for shared-pages | ||
227 | 6. Start reclamation when the limit is lowered | ||
228 | 7. Start reclamation in the background when the limit is | ||
229 | not yet hit but the usage is getting closer | ||
230 | 8. Create per zone LRU lists per cgroup | ||
231 | |||
232 | Summary | ||
233 | |||
234 | Overall, the memory controller has been a stable controller and has been | ||
235 | commented and discussed quite extensively in the community. | ||
236 | |||
237 | References | ||
238 | |||
239 | 1. Singh, Balbir. RFC: Memory Controller, http://lwn.net/Articles/206697/ | ||
240 | 2. Singh, Balbir. Memory Controller (RSS Control), | ||
241 | http://lwn.net/Articles/222762/ | ||
242 | 3. Emelianov, Pavel. Resource controllers based on process cgroups | ||
243 | http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/3/6/198 | ||
244 | 4. Emelianov, Pavel. RSS controller based on process cgroups (v2) | ||
245 | http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/4/9/74 | ||
246 | 5. Emelianov, Pavel. RSS controller based on process cgroups (v3) | ||
247 | http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/30/244 | ||
248 | 6. Menage, Paul. Control Groups v10, http://lwn.net/Articles/236032/ | ||
249 | 7. Vaidyanathan, Srinivasan, Control Groups: Pagecache accounting and control | ||
250 | subsystem (v3), http://lwn.net/Articles/235534/ | ||
251 | 8. Singh, Balbir. RSS controller V2 test results (lmbench), | ||
252 | http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/17/232 | ||
253 | 9. Singh, Balbir. RSS controller V2 AIM9 results | ||
254 | http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/18/1 | ||
255 | 10. Singh, Balbir. Memory controller v6 results, | ||
256 | http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/19/36 | ||
257 | 11. Singh, Balbir. Memory controller v6, http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/17/69 | ||
258 | 12. Corbet, Jonathan, Controlling memory use in cgroups, | ||
259 | http://lwn.net/Articles/243795/ | ||