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-rw-r--r--Documentation/controllers/memory.txt135
1 files changed, 125 insertions, 10 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/controllers/memory.txt b/Documentation/controllers/memory.txt
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@@ -137,7 +137,32 @@ behind this approach is that a cgroup that aggressively uses a shared
137page will eventually get charged for it (once it is uncharged from 137page will eventually get charged for it (once it is uncharged from
138the cgroup that brought it in -- this will happen on memory pressure). 138the cgroup that brought it in -- this will happen on memory pressure).
139 139
1402.4 Reclaim 140Exception: If CONFIG_CGROUP_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR_SWAP is not used..
141When you do swapoff and make swapped-out pages of shmem(tmpfs) to
142be backed into memory in force, charges for pages are accounted against the
143caller of swapoff rather than the users of shmem.
144
145
1462.4 Swap Extension (CONFIG_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR_SWAP)
147Swap Extension allows you to record charge for swap. A swapped-in page is
148charged back to original page allocator if possible.
149
150When swap is accounted, following files are added.
151 - memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes.
152 - memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes.
153
154usage of mem+swap is limited by memsw.limit_in_bytes.
155
156Note: why 'mem+swap' rather than swap.
157The global LRU(kswapd) can swap out arbitrary pages. Swap-out means
158to move account from memory to swap...there is no change in usage of
159mem+swap.
160
161In other words, when we want to limit the usage of swap without affecting
162global LRU, mem+swap limit is better than just limiting swap from OS point
163of view.
164
1652.5 Reclaim
141 166
142Each cgroup maintains a per cgroup LRU that consists of an active 167Each cgroup maintains a per cgroup LRU that consists of an active
143and inactive list. When a cgroup goes over its limit, we first try 168and inactive list. When a cgroup goes over its limit, we first try
@@ -207,12 +232,6 @@ exceeded.
207The memory.stat file gives accounting information. Now, the number of 232The memory.stat file gives accounting information. Now, the number of
208caches, RSS and Active pages/Inactive pages are shown. 233caches, RSS and Active pages/Inactive pages are shown.
209 234
210The memory.force_empty gives an interface to drop *all* charges by force.
211
212# echo 1 > memory.force_empty
213
214will drop all charges in cgroup. Currently, this is maintained for test.
215
2164. Testing 2354. Testing
217 236
218Balbir posted lmbench, AIM9, LTP and vmmstress results [10] and [11]. 237Balbir posted lmbench, AIM9, LTP and vmmstress results [10] and [11].
@@ -242,10 +261,106 @@ reclaimed.
242 261
243A cgroup can be removed by rmdir, but as discussed in sections 4.1 and 4.2, a 262A cgroup can be removed by rmdir, but as discussed in sections 4.1 and 4.2, a
244cgroup might have some charge associated with it, even though all 263cgroup might have some charge associated with it, even though all
245tasks have migrated away from it. Such charges are automatically dropped at 264tasks have migrated away from it.
246rmdir() if there are no tasks. 265Such charges are freed(at default) or moved to its parent. When moved,
266both of RSS and CACHES are moved to parent.
267If both of them are busy, rmdir() returns -EBUSY. See 5.1 Also.
268
269Charges recorded in swap information is not updated at removal of cgroup.
270Recorded information is discarded and a cgroup which uses swap (swapcache)
271will be charged as a new owner of it.
272
273
2745. Misc. interfaces.
275
2765.1 force_empty
277 memory.force_empty interface is provided to make cgroup's memory usage empty.
278 You can use this interface only when the cgroup has no tasks.
279 When writing anything to this
280
281 # echo 0 > memory.force_empty
282
283 Almost all pages tracked by this memcg will be unmapped and freed. Some of
284 pages cannot be freed because it's locked or in-use. Such pages are moved
285 to parent and this cgroup will be empty. But this may return -EBUSY in
286 some too busy case.
287
288 Typical use case of this interface is that calling this before rmdir().
289 Because rmdir() moves all pages to parent, some out-of-use page caches can be
290 moved to the parent. If you want to avoid that, force_empty will be useful.
291
2925.2 stat file
293 memory.stat file includes following statistics (now)
294 cache - # of pages from page-cache and shmem.
295 rss - # of pages from anonymous memory.
296 pgpgin - # of event of charging
297 pgpgout - # of event of uncharging
298 active_anon - # of pages on active lru of anon, shmem.
299 inactive_anon - # of pages on active lru of anon, shmem
300 active_file - # of pages on active lru of file-cache
301 inactive_file - # of pages on inactive lru of file cache
302 unevictable - # of pages cannot be reclaimed.(mlocked etc)
303
304 Below is depend on CONFIG_DEBUG_VM.
305 inactive_ratio - VM inernal parameter. (see mm/page_alloc.c)
306 recent_rotated_anon - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
307 recent_rotated_file - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
308 recent_scanned_anon - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
309 recent_scanned_file - VM internal parameter. (see mm/vmscan.c)
310
311 Memo:
312 recent_rotated means recent frequency of lru rotation.
313 recent_scanned means recent # of scans to lru.
314 showing for better debug please see the code for meanings.
315
316
3175.3 swappiness
318 Similar to /proc/sys/vm/swappiness, but affecting a hierarchy of groups only.
319
320 Following cgroup's swapiness can't be changed.
321 - root cgroup (uses /proc/sys/vm/swappiness).
322 - a cgroup which uses hierarchy and it has child cgroup.
323 - a cgroup which uses hierarchy and not the root of hierarchy.
324
325
3266. Hierarchy support
327
328The memory controller supports a deep hierarchy and hierarchical accounting.
329The hierarchy is created by creating the appropriate cgroups in the
330cgroup filesystem. Consider for example, the following cgroup filesystem
331hierarchy
332
333 root
334 / | \
335 / | \
336 a b c
337 | \
338 | \
339 d e
340
341In the diagram above, with hierarchical accounting enabled, all memory
342usage of e, is accounted to its ancestors up until the root (i.e, c and root),
343that has memory.use_hierarchy enabled. If one of the ancestors goes over its
344limit, the reclaim algorithm reclaims from the tasks in the ancestor and the
345children of the ancestor.
346
3476.1 Enabling hierarchical accounting and reclaim
348
349The memory controller by default disables the hierarchy feature. Support
350can be enabled by writing 1 to memory.use_hierarchy file of the root cgroup
351
352# echo 1 > memory.use_hierarchy
353
354The feature can be disabled by
355
356# echo 0 > memory.use_hierarchy
357
358NOTE1: Enabling/disabling will fail if the cgroup already has other
359cgroups created below it.
360
361NOTE2: This feature can be enabled/disabled per subtree.
247 362
2485. TODO 3637. TODO
249 364
2501. Add support for accounting huge pages (as a separate controller) 3651. Add support for accounting huge pages (as a separate controller)
2512. Make per-cgroup scanner reclaim not-shared pages first 3662. Make per-cgroup scanner reclaim not-shared pages first