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authorAndré Fabian Silva Delgado <emulatorman@parabola.nu>2015-08-05 17:04:01 -0300
committerAndré Fabian Silva Delgado <emulatorman@parabola.nu>2015-08-05 17:04:01 -0300
commit57f0f512b273f60d52568b8c6b77e17f5636edc0 (patch)
tree5e910f0e82173f4ef4f51111366a3f1299037a7b /Documentation/cgroups
Initial import
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/cgroups')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/cgroups/00-INDEX28
-rw-r--r--Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt394
-rw-r--r--Documentation/cgroups/cgroups.txt678
-rw-r--r--Documentation/cgroups/cpuacct.txt49
-rw-r--r--Documentation/cgroups/cpusets.txt839
-rw-r--r--Documentation/cgroups/devices.txt116
-rw-r--r--Documentation/cgroups/freezer-subsystem.txt123
-rw-r--r--Documentation/cgroups/hugetlb.txt45
-rw-r--r--Documentation/cgroups/memcg_test.txt280
-rw-r--r--Documentation/cgroups/memory.txt875
-rw-r--r--Documentation/cgroups/net_cls.txt39
-rw-r--r--Documentation/cgroups/net_prio.txt55
-rw-r--r--Documentation/cgroups/unified-hierarchy.txt461
13 files changed, 3982 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/cgroups/00-INDEX b/Documentation/cgroups/00-INDEX
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..96ce071a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/cgroups/00-INDEX
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+00-INDEX
+ - this file
+blkio-controller.txt
+ - Description for Block IO Controller, implementation and usage details.
+cgroups.txt
+ - Control Groups definition, implementation details, examples and API.
+cpuacct.txt
+ - CPU Accounting Controller; account CPU usage for groups of tasks.
+cpusets.txt
+ - documents the cpusets feature; assign CPUs and Mem to a set of tasks.
+devices.txt
+ - Device Whitelist Controller; description, interface and security.
+freezer-subsystem.txt
+ - checkpointing; rationale to not use signals, interface.
+hugetlb.txt
+ - HugeTLB Controller implementation and usage details.
+memcg_test.txt
+ - Memory Resource Controller; implementation details.
+memory.txt
+ - Memory Resource Controller; design, accounting, interface, testing.
+net_cls.txt
+ - Network classifier cgroups details and usages.
+net_prio.txt
+ - Network priority cgroups details and usages.
+resource_counter.txt
+ - Resource Counter API.
+unified-hierarchy.txt
+ - Description the new/next cgroup interface.
diff --git a/Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt b/Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..cd556b914
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,394 @@
+ Block IO Controller
+ ===================
+Overview
+========
+cgroup subsys "blkio" implements the block io controller. There seems to be
+a need of various kinds of IO control policies (like proportional BW, max BW)
+both at leaf nodes as well as at intermediate nodes in a storage hierarchy.
+Plan is to use the same cgroup based management interface for blkio controller
+and based on user options switch IO policies in the background.
+
+Currently two IO control policies are implemented. First one is proportional
+weight time based division of disk policy. It is implemented in CFQ. Hence
+this policy takes effect only on leaf nodes when CFQ is being used. The second
+one is throttling policy which can be used to specify upper IO rate limits
+on devices. This policy is implemented in generic block layer and can be
+used on leaf nodes as well as higher level logical devices like device mapper.
+
+HOWTO
+=====
+Proportional Weight division of bandwidth
+-----------------------------------------
+You can do a very simple testing of running two dd threads in two different
+cgroups. Here is what you can do.
+
+- Enable Block IO controller
+ CONFIG_BLK_CGROUP=y
+
+- Enable group scheduling in CFQ
+ CONFIG_CFQ_GROUP_IOSCHED=y
+
+- Compile and boot into kernel and mount IO controller (blkio); see
+ cgroups.txt, Why are cgroups needed?.
+
+ mount -t tmpfs cgroup_root /sys/fs/cgroup
+ mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio
+ mount -t cgroup -o blkio none /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio
+
+- Create two cgroups
+ mkdir -p /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio/test1/ /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio/test2
+
+- Set weights of group test1 and test2
+ echo 1000 > /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio/test1/blkio.weight
+ echo 500 > /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio/test2/blkio.weight
+
+- Create two same size files (say 512MB each) on same disk (file1, file2) and
+ launch two dd threads in different cgroup to read those files.
+
+ sync
+ echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
+
+ dd if=/mnt/sdb/zerofile1 of=/dev/null &
+ echo $! > /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio/test1/tasks
+ cat /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio/test1/tasks
+
+ dd if=/mnt/sdb/zerofile2 of=/dev/null &
+ echo $! > /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio/test2/tasks
+ cat /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio/test2/tasks
+
+- At macro level, first dd should finish first. To get more precise data, keep
+ on looking at (with the help of script), at blkio.disk_time and
+ blkio.disk_sectors files of both test1 and test2 groups. This will tell how
+ much disk time (in milli seconds), each group got and how many secotors each
+ group dispatched to the disk. We provide fairness in terms of disk time, so
+ ideally io.disk_time of cgroups should be in proportion to the weight.
+
+Throttling/Upper Limit policy
+-----------------------------
+- Enable Block IO controller
+ CONFIG_BLK_CGROUP=y
+
+- Enable throttling in block layer
+ CONFIG_BLK_DEV_THROTTLING=y
+
+- Mount blkio controller (see cgroups.txt, Why are cgroups needed?)
+ mount -t cgroup -o blkio none /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio
+
+- Specify a bandwidth rate on particular device for root group. The format
+ for policy is "<major>:<minor> <bytes_per_second>".
+
+ echo "8:16 1048576" > /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio/blkio.throttle.read_bps_device
+
+ Above will put a limit of 1MB/second on reads happening for root group
+ on device having major/minor number 8:16.
+
+- Run dd to read a file and see if rate is throttled to 1MB/s or not.
+
+ # dd if=/mnt/common/zerofile of=/dev/null bs=4K count=1024
+ # iflag=direct
+ 1024+0 records in
+ 1024+0 records out
+ 4194304 bytes (4.2 MB) copied, 4.0001 s, 1.0 MB/s
+
+ Limits for writes can be put using blkio.throttle.write_bps_device file.
+
+Hierarchical Cgroups
+====================
+
+Both CFQ and throttling implement hierarchy support; however,
+throttling's hierarchy support is enabled iff "sane_behavior" is
+enabled from cgroup side, which currently is a development option and
+not publicly available.
+
+If somebody created a hierarchy like as follows.
+
+ root
+ / \
+ test1 test2
+ |
+ test3
+
+CFQ by default and throttling with "sane_behavior" will handle the
+hierarchy correctly. For details on CFQ hierarchy support, refer to
+Documentation/block/cfq-iosched.txt. For throttling, all limits apply
+to the whole subtree while all statistics are local to the IOs
+directly generated by tasks in that cgroup.
+
+Throttling without "sane_behavior" enabled from cgroup side will
+practically treat all groups at same level as if it looks like the
+following.
+
+ pivot
+ / / \ \
+ root test1 test2 test3
+
+Various user visible config options
+===================================
+CONFIG_BLK_CGROUP
+ - Block IO controller.
+
+CONFIG_DEBUG_BLK_CGROUP
+ - Debug help. Right now some additional stats file show up in cgroup
+ if this option is enabled.
+
+CONFIG_CFQ_GROUP_IOSCHED
+ - Enables group scheduling in CFQ. Currently only 1 level of group
+ creation is allowed.
+
+CONFIG_BLK_DEV_THROTTLING
+ - Enable block device throttling support in block layer.
+
+Details of cgroup files
+=======================
+Proportional weight policy files
+--------------------------------
+- blkio.weight
+ - Specifies per cgroup weight. This is default weight of the group
+ on all the devices until and unless overridden by per device rule.
+ (See blkio.weight_device).
+ Currently allowed range of weights is from 10 to 1000.
+
+- blkio.weight_device
+ - One can specify per cgroup per device rules using this interface.
+ These rules override the default value of group weight as specified
+ by blkio.weight.
+
+ Following is the format.
+
+ # echo dev_maj:dev_minor weight > blkio.weight_device
+ Configure weight=300 on /dev/sdb (8:16) in this cgroup
+ # echo 8:16 300 > blkio.weight_device
+ # cat blkio.weight_device
+ dev weight
+ 8:16 300
+
+ Configure weight=500 on /dev/sda (8:0) in this cgroup
+ # echo 8:0 500 > blkio.weight_device
+ # cat blkio.weight_device
+ dev weight
+ 8:0 500
+ 8:16 300
+
+ Remove specific weight for /dev/sda in this cgroup
+ # echo 8:0 0 > blkio.weight_device
+ # cat blkio.weight_device
+ dev weight
+ 8:16 300
+
+- blkio.leaf_weight[_device]
+ - Equivalents of blkio.weight[_device] for the purpose of
+ deciding how much weight tasks in the given cgroup has while
+ competing with the cgroup's child cgroups. For details,
+ please refer to Documentation/block/cfq-iosched.txt.
+
+- blkio.time
+ - disk time allocated to cgroup per device in milliseconds. First
+ two fields specify the major and minor number of the device and
+ third field specifies the disk time allocated to group in
+ milliseconds.
+
+- blkio.sectors
+ - number of sectors transferred to/from disk by the group. First
+ two fields specify the major and minor number of the device and
+ third field specifies the number of sectors transferred by the
+ group to/from the device.
+
+- blkio.io_service_bytes
+ - Number of bytes transferred to/from the disk by the group. These
+ are further divided by the type of operation - read or write, sync
+ or async. First two fields specify the major and minor number of the
+ device, third field specifies the operation type and the fourth field
+ specifies the number of bytes.
+
+- blkio.io_serviced
+ - Number of IOs completed to/from the disk by the group. These
+ are further divided by the type of operation - read or write, sync
+ or async. First two fields specify the major and minor number of the
+ device, third field specifies the operation type and the fourth field
+ specifies the number of IOs.
+
+- blkio.io_service_time
+ - Total amount of time between request dispatch and request completion
+ for the IOs done by this cgroup. This is in nanoseconds to make it
+ meaningful for flash devices too. For devices with queue depth of 1,
+ this time represents the actual service time. When queue_depth > 1,
+ that is no longer true as requests may be served out of order. This
+ may cause the service time for a given IO to include the service time
+ of multiple IOs when served out of order which may result in total
+ io_service_time > actual time elapsed. This time is further divided by
+ the type of operation - read or write, sync or async. First two fields
+ specify the major and minor number of the device, third field
+ specifies the operation type and the fourth field specifies the
+ io_service_time in ns.
+
+- blkio.io_wait_time
+ - Total amount of time the IOs for this cgroup spent waiting in the
+ scheduler queues for service. This can be greater than the total time
+ elapsed since it is cumulative io_wait_time for all IOs. It is not a
+ measure of total time the cgroup spent waiting but rather a measure of
+ the wait_time for its individual IOs. For devices with queue_depth > 1
+ this metric does not include the time spent waiting for service once
+ the IO is dispatched to the device but till it actually gets serviced
+ (there might be a time lag here due to re-ordering of requests by the
+ device). This is in nanoseconds to make it meaningful for flash
+ devices too. This time is further divided by the type of operation -
+ read or write, sync or async. First two fields specify the major and
+ minor number of the device, third field specifies the operation type
+ and the fourth field specifies the io_wait_time in ns.
+
+- blkio.io_merged
+ - Total number of bios/requests merged into requests belonging to this
+ cgroup. This is further divided by the type of operation - read or
+ write, sync or async.
+
+- blkio.io_queued
+ - Total number of requests queued up at any given instant for this
+ cgroup. This is further divided by the type of operation - read or
+ write, sync or async.
+
+- blkio.avg_queue_size
+ - Debugging aid only enabled if CONFIG_DEBUG_BLK_CGROUP=y.
+ The average queue size for this cgroup over the entire time of this
+ cgroup's existence. Queue size samples are taken each time one of the
+ queues of this cgroup gets a timeslice.
+
+- blkio.group_wait_time
+ - Debugging aid only enabled if CONFIG_DEBUG_BLK_CGROUP=y.
+ This is the amount of time the cgroup had to wait since it became busy
+ (i.e., went from 0 to 1 request queued) to get a timeslice for one of
+ its queues. This is different from the io_wait_time which is the
+ cumulative total of the amount of time spent by each IO in that cgroup
+ waiting in the scheduler queue. This is in nanoseconds. If this is
+ read when the cgroup is in a waiting (for timeslice) state, the stat
+ will only report the group_wait_time accumulated till the last time it
+ got a timeslice and will not include the current delta.
+
+- blkio.empty_time
+ - Debugging aid only enabled if CONFIG_DEBUG_BLK_CGROUP=y.
+ This is the amount of time a cgroup spends without any pending
+ requests when not being served, i.e., it does not include any time
+ spent idling for one of the queues of the cgroup. This is in
+ nanoseconds. If this is read when the cgroup is in an empty state,
+ the stat will only report the empty_time accumulated till the last
+ time it had a pending request and will not include the current delta.
+
+- blkio.idle_time
+ - Debugging aid only enabled if CONFIG_DEBUG_BLK_CGROUP=y.
+ This is the amount of time spent by the IO scheduler idling for a
+ given cgroup in anticipation of a better request than the existing ones
+ from other queues/cgroups. This is in nanoseconds. If this is read
+ when the cgroup is in an idling state, the stat will only report the
+ idle_time accumulated till the last idle period and will not include
+ the current delta.
+
+- blkio.dequeue
+ - Debugging aid only enabled if CONFIG_DEBUG_BLK_CGROUP=y. This
+ gives the statistics about how many a times a group was dequeued
+ from service tree of the device. First two fields specify the major
+ and minor number of the device and third field specifies the number
+ of times a group was dequeued from a particular device.
+
+- blkio.*_recursive
+ - Recursive version of various stats. These files show the
+ same information as their non-recursive counterparts but
+ include stats from all the descendant cgroups.
+
+Throttling/Upper limit policy files
+-----------------------------------
+- blkio.throttle.read_bps_device
+ - Specifies upper limit on READ rate from the device. IO rate is
+ specified in bytes per second. Rules are per device. Following is
+ the format.
+
+ echo "<major>:<minor> <rate_bytes_per_second>" > /cgrp/blkio.throttle.read_bps_device
+
+- blkio.throttle.write_bps_device
+ - Specifies upper limit on WRITE rate to the device. IO rate is
+ specified in bytes per second. Rules are per device. Following is
+ the format.
+
+ echo "<major>:<minor> <rate_bytes_per_second>" > /cgrp/blkio.throttle.write_bps_device
+
+- blkio.throttle.read_iops_device
+ - Specifies upper limit on READ rate from the device. IO rate is
+ specified in IO per second. Rules are per device. Following is
+ the format.
+
+ echo "<major>:<minor> <rate_io_per_second>" > /cgrp/blkio.throttle.read_iops_device
+
+- blkio.throttle.write_iops_device
+ - Specifies upper limit on WRITE rate to the device. IO rate is
+ specified in io per second. Rules are per device. Following is
+ the format.
+
+ echo "<major>:<minor> <rate_io_per_second>" > /cgrp/blkio.throttle.write_iops_device
+
+Note: If both BW and IOPS rules are specified for a device, then IO is
+ subjected to both the constraints.
+
+- blkio.throttle.io_serviced
+ - Number of IOs (bio) completed to/from the disk by the group (as
+ seen by throttling policy). These are further divided by the type
+ of operation - read or write, sync or async. First two fields specify
+ the major and minor number of the device, third field specifies the
+ operation type and the fourth field specifies the number of IOs.
+
+ blkio.io_serviced does accounting as seen by CFQ and counts are in
+ number of requests (struct request). On the other hand,
+ blkio.throttle.io_serviced counts number of IO in terms of number
+ of bios as seen by throttling policy. These bios can later be
+ merged by elevator and total number of requests completed can be
+ lesser.
+
+- blkio.throttle.io_service_bytes
+ - Number of bytes transferred to/from the disk by the group. These
+ are further divided by the type of operation - read or write, sync
+ or async. First two fields specify the major and minor number of the
+ device, third field specifies the operation type and the fourth field
+ specifies the number of bytes.
+
+ These numbers should roughly be same as blkio.io_service_bytes as
+ updated by CFQ. The difference between two is that
+ blkio.io_service_bytes will not be updated if CFQ is not operating
+ on request queue.
+
+Common files among various policies
+-----------------------------------
+- blkio.reset_stats
+ - Writing an int to this file will result in resetting all the stats
+ for that cgroup.
+
+CFQ sysfs tunable
+=================
+/sys/block/<disk>/queue/iosched/slice_idle
+------------------------------------------
+On a faster hardware CFQ can be slow, especially with sequential workload.
+This happens because CFQ idles on a single queue and single queue might not
+drive deeper request queue depths to keep the storage busy. In such scenarios
+one can try setting slice_idle=0 and that would switch CFQ to IOPS
+(IO operations per second) mode on NCQ supporting hardware.
+
+That means CFQ will not idle between cfq queues of a cfq group and hence be
+able to driver higher queue depth and achieve better throughput. That also
+means that cfq provides fairness among groups in terms of IOPS and not in
+terms of disk time.
+
+/sys/block/<disk>/queue/iosched/group_idle
+------------------------------------------
+If one disables idling on individual cfq queues and cfq service trees by
+setting slice_idle=0, group_idle kicks in. That means CFQ will still idle
+on the group in an attempt to provide fairness among groups.
+
+By default group_idle is same as slice_idle and does not do anything if
+slice_idle is enabled.
+
+One can experience an overall throughput drop if you have created multiple
+groups and put applications in that group which are not driving enough
+IO to keep disk busy. In that case set group_idle=0, and CFQ will not idle
+on individual groups and throughput should improve.
+
+What works
+==========
+- Currently only sync IO queues are support. All the buffered writes are
+ still system wide and not per group. Hence we will not see service
+ differentiation between buffered writes between groups.
diff --git a/Documentation/cgroups/cgroups.txt b/Documentation/cgroups/cgroups.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..f935fac1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/cgroups/cgroups.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,678 @@
+ CGROUPS
+ -------
+
+Written by Paul Menage <menage@google.com> based on
+Documentation/cgroups/cpusets.txt
+
+Original copyright statements from cpusets.txt:
+Portions Copyright (C) 2004 BULL SA.
+Portions Copyright (c) 2004-2006 Silicon Graphics, Inc.
+Modified by Paul Jackson <pj@sgi.com>
+Modified by Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
+
+CONTENTS:
+=========
+
+1. Control Groups
+ 1.1 What are cgroups ?
+ 1.2 Why are cgroups needed ?
+ 1.3 How are cgroups implemented ?
+ 1.4 What does notify_on_release do ?
+ 1.5 What does clone_children do ?
+ 1.6 How do I use cgroups ?
+2. Usage Examples and Syntax
+ 2.1 Basic Usage
+ 2.2 Attaching processes
+ 2.3 Mounting hierarchies by name
+3. Kernel API
+ 3.1 Overview
+ 3.2 Synchronization
+ 3.3 Subsystem API
+4. Extended attributes usage
+5. Questions
+
+1. Control Groups
+=================
+
+1.1 What are cgroups ?
+----------------------
+
+Control Groups provide a mechanism for aggregating/partitioning sets of
+tasks, and all their future children, into hierarchical groups with
+specialized behaviour.
+
+Definitions:
+
+A *cgroup* associates a set of tasks with a set of parameters for one
+or more subsystems.
+
+A *subsystem* is a module that makes use of the task grouping
+facilities provided by cgroups to treat groups of tasks in
+particular ways. A subsystem is typically a "resource controller" that
+schedules a resource or applies per-cgroup limits, but it may be
+anything that wants to act on a group of processes, e.g. a
+virtualization subsystem.
+
+A *hierarchy* is a set of cgroups arranged in a tree, such that
+every task in the system is in exactly one of the cgroups in the
+hierarchy, and a set of subsystems; each subsystem has system-specific
+state attached to each cgroup in the hierarchy. Each hierarchy has
+an instance of the cgroup virtual filesystem associated with it.
+
+At any one time there may be multiple active hierarchies of task
+cgroups. Each hierarchy is a partition of all tasks in the system.
+
+User-level code may create and destroy cgroups by name in an
+instance of the cgroup virtual file system, specify and query to
+which cgroup a task is assigned, and list the task PIDs assigned to
+a cgroup. Those creations and assignments only affect the hierarchy
+associated with that instance of the cgroup file system.
+
+On their own, the only use for cgroups is for simple job
+tracking. The intention is that other subsystems hook into the generic
+cgroup support to provide new attributes for cgroups, such as
+accounting/limiting the resources which processes in a cgroup can
+access. For example, cpusets (see Documentation/cgroups/cpusets.txt) allow
+you to associate a set of CPUs and a set of memory nodes with the
+tasks in each cgroup.
+
+1.2 Why are cgroups needed ?
+----------------------------
+
+There are multiple efforts to provide process aggregations in the
+Linux kernel, mainly for resource-tracking purposes. Such efforts
+include cpusets, CKRM/ResGroups, UserBeanCounters, and virtual server
+namespaces. These all require the basic notion of a
+grouping/partitioning of processes, with newly forked processes ending
+up in the same group (cgroup) as their parent process.
+
+The kernel cgroup patch provides the minimum essential kernel
+mechanisms required to efficiently implement such groups. It has
+minimal impact on the system fast paths, and provides hooks for
+specific subsystems such as cpusets to provide additional behaviour as
+desired.
+
+Multiple hierarchy support is provided to allow for situations where
+the division of tasks into cgroups is distinctly different for
+different subsystems - having parallel hierarchies allows each
+hierarchy to be a natural division of tasks, without having to handle
+complex combinations of tasks that would be present if several
+unrelated subsystems needed to be forced into the same tree of
+cgroups.
+
+At one extreme, each resource controller or subsystem could be in a
+separate hierarchy; at the other extreme, all subsystems
+would be attached to the same hierarchy.
+
+As an example of a scenario (originally proposed by vatsa@in.ibm.com)
+that can benefit from multiple hierarchies, consider a large
+university server with various users - students, professors, system
+tasks etc. The resource planning for this server could be along the
+following lines:
+
+ CPU : "Top cpuset"
+ / \
+ CPUSet1 CPUSet2
+ | |
+ (Professors) (Students)
+
+ In addition (system tasks) are attached to topcpuset (so
+ that they can run anywhere) with a limit of 20%
+
+ Memory : Professors (50%), Students (30%), system (20%)
+
+ Disk : Professors (50%), Students (30%), system (20%)
+
+ Network : WWW browsing (20%), Network File System (60%), others (20%)
+ / \
+ Professors (15%) students (5%)
+
+Browsers like Firefox/Lynx go into the WWW network class, while (k)nfsd goes
+into the NFS network class.
+
+At the same time Firefox/Lynx will share an appropriate CPU/Memory class
+depending on who launched it (prof/student).
+
+With the ability to classify tasks differently for different resources
+(by putting those resource subsystems in different hierarchies),
+the admin can easily set up a script which receives exec notifications
+and depending on who is launching the browser he can
+
+ # echo browser_pid > /sys/fs/cgroup/<restype>/<userclass>/tasks
+
+With only a single hierarchy, he now would potentially have to create
+a separate cgroup for every browser launched and associate it with
+appropriate network and other resource class. This may lead to
+proliferation of such cgroups.
+
+Also let's say that the administrator would like to give enhanced network
+access temporarily to a student's browser (since it is night and the user
+wants to do online gaming :)) OR give one of the student's simulation
+apps enhanced CPU power.
+
+With ability to write PIDs directly to resource classes, it's just a
+matter of:
+
+ # echo pid > /sys/fs/cgroup/network/<new_class>/tasks
+ (after some time)
+ # echo pid > /sys/fs/cgroup/network/<orig_class>/tasks
+
+Without this ability, the administrator would have to split the cgroup into
+multiple separate ones and then associate the new cgroups with the
+new resource classes.
+
+
+
+1.3 How are cgroups implemented ?
+---------------------------------
+
+Control Groups extends the kernel as follows:
+
+ - Each task in the system has a reference-counted pointer to a
+ css_set.
+
+ - A css_set contains a set of reference-counted pointers to
+ cgroup_subsys_state objects, one for each cgroup subsystem
+ registered in the system. There is no direct link from a task to
+ the cgroup of which it's a member in each hierarchy, but this
+ can be determined by following pointers through the
+ cgroup_subsys_state objects. This is because accessing the
+ subsystem state is something that's expected to happen frequently
+ and in performance-critical code, whereas operations that require a
+ task's actual cgroup assignments (in particular, moving between
+ cgroups) are less common. A linked list runs through the cg_list
+ field of each task_struct using the css_set, anchored at
+ css_set->tasks.
+
+ - A cgroup hierarchy filesystem can be mounted for browsing and
+ manipulation from user space.
+
+ - You can list all the tasks (by PID) attached to any cgroup.
+
+The implementation of cgroups requires a few, simple hooks
+into the rest of the kernel, none in performance-critical paths:
+
+ - in init/main.c, to initialize the root cgroups and initial
+ css_set at system boot.
+
+ - in fork and exit, to attach and detach a task from its css_set.
+
+In addition, a new file system of type "cgroup" may be mounted, to
+enable browsing and modifying the cgroups presently known to the
+kernel. When mounting a cgroup hierarchy, you may specify a
+comma-separated list of subsystems to mount as the filesystem mount
+options. By default, mounting the cgroup filesystem attempts to
+mount a hierarchy containing all registered subsystems.
+
+If an active hierarchy with exactly the same set of subsystems already
+exists, it will be reused for the new mount. If no existing hierarchy
+matches, and any of the requested subsystems are in use in an existing
+hierarchy, the mount will fail with -EBUSY. Otherwise, a new hierarchy
+is activated, associated with the requested subsystems.
+
+It's not currently possible to bind a new subsystem to an active
+cgroup hierarchy, or to unbind a subsystem from an active cgroup
+hierarchy. This may be possible in future, but is fraught with nasty
+error-recovery issues.
+
+When a cgroup filesystem is unmounted, if there are any
+child cgroups created below the top-level cgroup, that hierarchy
+will remain active even though unmounted; if there are no
+child cgroups then the hierarchy will be deactivated.
+
+No new system calls are added for cgroups - all support for
+querying and modifying cgroups is via this cgroup file system.
+
+Each task under /proc has an added file named 'cgroup' displaying,
+for each active hierarchy, the subsystem names and the cgroup name
+as the path relative to the root of the cgroup file system.
+
+Each cgroup is represented by a directory in the cgroup file system
+containing the following files describing that cgroup:
+
+ - tasks: list of tasks (by PID) attached to that cgroup. This list
+ is not guaranteed to be sorted. Writing a thread ID into this file
+ moves the thread into this cgroup.
+ - cgroup.procs: list of thread group IDs in the cgroup. This list is
+ not guaranteed to be sorted or free of duplicate TGIDs, and userspace
+ should sort/uniquify the list if this property is required.
+ Writing a thread group ID into this file moves all threads in that
+ group into this cgroup.
+ - notify_on_release flag: run the release agent on exit?
+ - release_agent: the path to use for release notifications (this file
+ exists in the top cgroup only)
+
+Other subsystems such as cpusets may add additional files in each
+cgroup dir.
+
+New cgroups are created using the mkdir system call or shell
+command. The properties of a cgroup, such as its flags, are
+modified by writing to the appropriate file in that cgroups
+directory, as listed above.
+
+The named hierarchical structure of nested cgroups allows partitioning
+a large system into nested, dynamically changeable, "soft-partitions".
+
+The attachment of each task, automatically inherited at fork by any
+children of that task, to a cgroup allows organizing the work load
+on a system into related sets of tasks. A task may be re-attached to
+any other cgroup, if allowed by the permissions on the necessary
+cgroup file system directories.
+
+When a task is moved from one cgroup to another, it gets a new
+css_set pointer - if there's an already existing css_set with the
+desired collection of cgroups then that group is reused, otherwise a new
+css_set is allocated. The appropriate existing css_set is located by
+looking into a hash table.
+
+To allow access from a cgroup to the css_sets (and hence tasks)
+that comprise it, a set of cg_cgroup_link objects form a lattice;
+each cg_cgroup_link is linked into a list of cg_cgroup_links for
+a single cgroup on its cgrp_link_list field, and a list of
+cg_cgroup_links for a single css_set on its cg_link_list.
+
+Thus the set of tasks in a cgroup can be listed by iterating over
+each css_set that references the cgroup, and sub-iterating over
+each css_set's task set.
+
+The use of a Linux virtual file system (vfs) to represent the
+cgroup hierarchy provides for a familiar permission and name space
+for cgroups, with a minimum of additional kernel code.
+
+1.4 What does notify_on_release do ?
+------------------------------------
+
+If the notify_on_release flag is enabled (1) in a cgroup, then
+whenever the last task in the cgroup leaves (exits or attaches to
+some other cgroup) and the last child cgroup of that cgroup
+is removed, then the kernel runs the command specified by the contents
+of the "release_agent" file in that hierarchy's root directory,
+supplying the pathname (relative to the mount point of the cgroup
+file system) of the abandoned cgroup. This enables automatic
+removal of abandoned cgroups. The default value of
+notify_on_release in the root cgroup at system boot is disabled
+(0). The default value of other cgroups at creation is the current
+value of their parents' notify_on_release settings. The default value of
+a cgroup hierarchy's release_agent path is empty.
+
+1.5 What does clone_children do ?
+---------------------------------
+
+This flag only affects the cpuset controller. If the clone_children
+flag is enabled (1) in a cgroup, a new cpuset cgroup will copy its
+configuration from the parent during initialization.
+
+1.6 How do I use cgroups ?
+--------------------------
+
+To start a new job that is to be contained within a cgroup, using
+the "cpuset" cgroup subsystem, the steps are something like:
+
+ 1) mount -t tmpfs cgroup_root /sys/fs/cgroup
+ 2) mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset
+ 3) mount -t cgroup -ocpuset cpuset /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset
+ 4) Create the new cgroup by doing mkdir's and write's (or echo's) in
+ the /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset virtual file system.
+ 5) Start a task that will be the "founding father" of the new job.
+ 6) Attach that task to the new cgroup by writing its PID to the
+ /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset tasks file for that cgroup.
+ 7) fork, exec or clone the job tasks from this founding father task.
+
+For example, the following sequence of commands will setup a cgroup
+named "Charlie", containing just CPUs 2 and 3, and Memory Node 1,
+and then start a subshell 'sh' in that cgroup:
+
+ mount -t tmpfs cgroup_root /sys/fs/cgroup
+ mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset
+ mount -t cgroup cpuset -ocpuset /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset
+ cd /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset
+ mkdir Charlie
+ cd Charlie
+ /bin/echo 2-3 > cpuset.cpus
+ /bin/echo 1 > cpuset.mems
+ /bin/echo $$ > tasks
+ sh
+ # The subshell 'sh' is now running in cgroup Charlie
+ # The next line should display '/Charlie'
+ cat /proc/self/cgroup
+
+2. Usage Examples and Syntax
+============================
+
+2.1 Basic Usage
+---------------
+
+Creating, modifying, using cgroups can be done through the cgroup
+virtual filesystem.
+
+To mount a cgroup hierarchy with all available subsystems, type:
+# mount -t cgroup xxx /sys/fs/cgroup
+
+The "xxx" is not interpreted by the cgroup code, but will appear in
+/proc/mounts so may be any useful identifying string that you like.
+
+Note: Some subsystems do not work without some user input first. For instance,
+if cpusets are enabled the user will have to populate the cpus and mems files
+for each new cgroup created before that group can be used.
+
+As explained in section `1.2 Why are cgroups needed?' you should create
+different hierarchies of cgroups for each single resource or group of
+resources you want to control. Therefore, you should mount a tmpfs on
+/sys/fs/cgroup and create directories for each cgroup resource or resource
+group.
+
+# mount -t tmpfs cgroup_root /sys/fs/cgroup
+# mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/rg1
+
+To mount a cgroup hierarchy with just the cpuset and memory
+subsystems, type:
+# mount -t cgroup -o cpuset,memory hier1 /sys/fs/cgroup/rg1
+
+While remounting cgroups is currently supported, it is not recommend
+to use it. Remounting allows changing bound subsystems and
+release_agent. Rebinding is hardly useful as it only works when the
+hierarchy is empty and release_agent itself should be replaced with
+conventional fsnotify. The support for remounting will be removed in
+the future.
+
+To Specify a hierarchy's release_agent:
+# mount -t cgroup -o cpuset,release_agent="/sbin/cpuset_release_agent" \
+ xxx /sys/fs/cgroup/rg1
+
+Note that specifying 'release_agent' more than once will return failure.
+
+Note that changing the set of subsystems is currently only supported
+when the hierarchy consists of a single (root) cgroup. Supporting
+the ability to arbitrarily bind/unbind subsystems from an existing
+cgroup hierarchy is intended to be implemented in the future.
+
+Then under /sys/fs/cgroup/rg1 you can find a tree that corresponds to the
+tree of the cgroups in the system. For instance, /sys/fs/cgroup/rg1
+is the cgroup that holds the whole system.
+
+If you want to change the value of release_agent:
+# echo "/sbin/new_release_agent" > /sys/fs/cgroup/rg1/release_agent
+
+It can also be changed via remount.
+
+If you want to create a new cgroup under /sys/fs/cgroup/rg1:
+# cd /sys/fs/cgroup/rg1
+# mkdir my_cgroup
+
+Now you want to do something with this cgroup.
+# cd my_cgroup
+
+In this directory you can find several files:
+# ls
+cgroup.procs notify_on_release tasks
+(plus whatever files added by the attached subsystems)
+
+Now attach your shell to this cgroup:
+# /bin/echo $$ > tasks
+
+You can also create cgroups inside your cgroup by using mkdir in this
+directory.
+# mkdir my_sub_cs
+
+To remove a cgroup, just use rmdir:
+# rmdir my_sub_cs
+
+This will fail if the cgroup is in use (has cgroups inside, or
+has processes attached, or is held alive by other subsystem-specific
+reference).
+
+2.2 Attaching processes
+-----------------------
+
+# /bin/echo PID > tasks
+
+Note that it is PID, not PIDs. You can only attach ONE task at a time.
+If you have several tasks to attach, you have to do it one after another:
+
+# /bin/echo PID1 > tasks
+# /bin/echo PID2 > tasks
+ ...
+# /bin/echo PIDn > tasks
+
+You can attach the current shell task by echoing 0:
+
+# echo 0 > tasks
+
+You can use the cgroup.procs file instead of the tasks file to move all
+threads in a threadgroup at once. Echoing the PID of any task in a
+threadgroup to cgroup.procs causes all tasks in that threadgroup to be
+attached to the cgroup. Writing 0 to cgroup.procs moves all tasks
+in the writing task's threadgroup.
+
+Note: Since every task is always a member of exactly one cgroup in each
+mounted hierarchy, to remove a task from its current cgroup you must
+move it into a new cgroup (possibly the root cgroup) by writing to the
+new cgroup's tasks file.
+
+Note: Due to some restrictions enforced by some cgroup subsystems, moving
+a process to another cgroup can fail.
+
+2.3 Mounting hierarchies by name
+--------------------------------
+
+Passing the name=<x> option when mounting a cgroups hierarchy
+associates the given name with the hierarchy. This can be used when
+mounting a pre-existing hierarchy, in order to refer to it by name
+rather than by its set of active subsystems. Each hierarchy is either
+nameless, or has a unique name.
+
+The name should match [\w.-]+
+
+When passing a name=<x> option for a new hierarchy, you need to
+specify subsystems manually; the legacy behaviour of mounting all
+subsystems when none are explicitly specified is not supported when
+you give a subsystem a name.
+
+The name of the subsystem appears as part of the hierarchy description
+in /proc/mounts and /proc/<pid>/cgroups.
+
+
+3. Kernel API
+=============
+
+3.1 Overview
+------------
+
+Each kernel subsystem that wants to hook into the generic cgroup
+system needs to create a cgroup_subsys object. This contains
+various methods, which are callbacks from the cgroup system, along
+with a subsystem ID which will be assigned by the cgroup system.
+
+Other fields in the cgroup_subsys object include:
+
+- subsys_id: a unique array index for the subsystem, indicating which
+ entry in cgroup->subsys[] this subsystem should be managing.
+
+- name: should be initialized to a unique subsystem name. Should be
+ no longer than MAX_CGROUP_TYPE_NAMELEN.
+
+- early_init: indicate if the subsystem needs early initialization
+ at system boot.
+
+Each cgroup object created by the system has an array of pointers,
+indexed by subsystem ID; this pointer is entirely managed by the
+subsystem; the generic cgroup code will never touch this pointer.
+
+3.2 Synchronization
+-------------------
+
+There is a global mutex, cgroup_mutex, used by the cgroup
+system. This should be taken by anything that wants to modify a
+cgroup. It may also be taken to prevent cgroups from being
+modified, but more specific locks may be more appropriate in that
+situation.
+
+See kernel/cgroup.c for more details.
+
+Subsystems can take/release the cgroup_mutex via the functions
+cgroup_lock()/cgroup_unlock().
+
+Accessing a task's cgroup pointer may be done in the following ways:
+- while holding cgroup_mutex
+- while holding the task's alloc_lock (via task_lock())
+- inside an rcu_read_lock() section via rcu_dereference()
+
+3.3 Subsystem API
+-----------------
+
+Each subsystem should:
+
+- add an entry in linux/cgroup_subsys.h
+- define a cgroup_subsys object called <name>_subsys
+
+If a subsystem can be compiled as a module, it should also have in its
+module initcall a call to cgroup_load_subsys(), and in its exitcall a
+call to cgroup_unload_subsys(). It should also set its_subsys.module =
+THIS_MODULE in its .c file.
+
+Each subsystem may export the following methods. The only mandatory
+methods are css_alloc/free. Any others that are null are presumed to
+be successful no-ops.
+
+struct cgroup_subsys_state *css_alloc(struct cgroup *cgrp)
+(cgroup_mutex held by caller)
+
+Called to allocate a subsystem state object for a cgroup. The
+subsystem should allocate its subsystem state object for the passed
+cgroup, returning a pointer to the new object on success or a
+ERR_PTR() value. On success, the subsystem pointer should point to
+a structure of type cgroup_subsys_state (typically embedded in a
+larger subsystem-specific object), which will be initialized by the
+cgroup system. Note that this will be called at initialization to
+create the root subsystem state for this subsystem; this case can be
+identified by the passed cgroup object having a NULL parent (since
+it's the root of the hierarchy) and may be an appropriate place for
+initialization code.
+
+int css_online(struct cgroup *cgrp)
+(cgroup_mutex held by caller)
+
+Called after @cgrp successfully completed all allocations and made
+visible to cgroup_for_each_child/descendant_*() iterators. The
+subsystem may choose to fail creation by returning -errno. This
+callback can be used to implement reliable state sharing and
+propagation along the hierarchy. See the comment on
+cgroup_for_each_descendant_pre() for details.
+
+void css_offline(struct cgroup *cgrp);
+(cgroup_mutex held by caller)
+
+This is the counterpart of css_online() and called iff css_online()
+has succeeded on @cgrp. This signifies the beginning of the end of
+@cgrp. @cgrp is being removed and the subsystem should start dropping
+all references it's holding on @cgrp. When all references are dropped,
+cgroup removal will proceed to the next step - css_free(). After this
+callback, @cgrp should be considered dead to the subsystem.
+
+void css_free(struct cgroup *cgrp)
+(cgroup_mutex held by caller)
+
+The cgroup system is about to free @cgrp; the subsystem should free
+its subsystem state object. By the time this method is called, @cgrp
+is completely unused; @cgrp->parent is still valid. (Note - can also
+be called for a newly-created cgroup if an error occurs after this
+subsystem's create() method has been called for the new cgroup).
+
+int can_attach(struct cgroup *cgrp, struct cgroup_taskset *tset)
+(cgroup_mutex held by caller)
+
+Called prior to moving one or more tasks into a cgroup; if the
+subsystem returns an error, this will abort the attach operation.
+@tset contains the tasks to be attached and is guaranteed to have at
+least one task in it.
+
+If there are multiple tasks in the taskset, then:
+ - it's guaranteed that all are from the same thread group
+ - @tset contains all tasks from the thread group whether or not
+ they're switching cgroups
+ - the first task is the leader
+
+Each @tset entry also contains the task's old cgroup and tasks which
+aren't switching cgroup can be skipped easily using the
+cgroup_taskset_for_each() iterator. Note that this isn't called on a
+fork. If this method returns 0 (success) then this should remain valid
+while the caller holds cgroup_mutex and it is ensured that either
+attach() or cancel_attach() will be called in future.
+
+void css_reset(struct cgroup_subsys_state *css)
+(cgroup_mutex held by caller)
+
+An optional operation which should restore @css's configuration to the
+initial state. This is currently only used on the unified hierarchy
+when a subsystem is disabled on a cgroup through
+"cgroup.subtree_control" but should remain enabled because other
+subsystems depend on it. cgroup core makes such a css invisible by
+removing the associated interface files and invokes this callback so
+that the hidden subsystem can return to the initial neutral state.
+This prevents unexpected resource control from a hidden css and
+ensures that the configuration is in the initial state when it is made
+visible again later.
+
+void cancel_attach(struct cgroup *cgrp, struct cgroup_taskset *tset)
+(cgroup_mutex held by caller)
+
+Called when a task attach operation has failed after can_attach() has succeeded.
+A subsystem whose can_attach() has some side-effects should provide this
+function, so that the subsystem can implement a rollback. If not, not necessary.
+This will be called only about subsystems whose can_attach() operation have
+succeeded. The parameters are identical to can_attach().
+
+void attach(struct cgroup *cgrp, struct cgroup_taskset *tset)
+(cgroup_mutex held by caller)
+
+Called after the task has been attached to the cgroup, to allow any
+post-attachment activity that requires memory allocations or blocking.
+The parameters are identical to can_attach().
+
+void fork(struct task_struct *task)
+
+Called when a task is forked into a cgroup.
+
+void exit(struct task_struct *task)
+
+Called during task exit.
+
+void bind(struct cgroup *root)
+(cgroup_mutex held by caller)
+
+Called when a cgroup subsystem is rebound to a different hierarchy
+and root cgroup. Currently this will only involve movement between
+the default hierarchy (which never has sub-cgroups) and a hierarchy
+that is being created/destroyed (and hence has no sub-cgroups).
+
+4. Extended attribute usage
+===========================
+
+cgroup filesystem supports certain types of extended attributes in its
+directories and files. The current supported types are:
+ - Trusted (XATTR_TRUSTED)
+ - Security (XATTR_SECURITY)
+
+Both require CAP_SYS_ADMIN capability to set.
+
+Like in tmpfs, the extended attributes in cgroup filesystem are stored
+using kernel memory and it's advised to keep the usage at minimum. This
+is the reason why user defined extended attributes are not supported, since
+any user can do it and there's no limit in the value size.
+
+The current known users for this feature are SELinux to limit cgroup usage
+in containers and systemd for assorted meta data like main PID in a cgroup
+(systemd creates a cgroup per service).
+
+5. Questions
+============
+
+Q: what's up with this '/bin/echo' ?
+A: bash's builtin 'echo' command does not check calls to write() against
+ errors. If you use it in the cgroup file system, you won't be
+ able to tell whether a command succeeded or failed.
+
+Q: When I attach processes, only the first of the line gets really attached !
+A: We can only return one error code per call to write(). So you should also
+ put only ONE PID.
+
diff --git a/Documentation/cgroups/cpuacct.txt b/Documentation/cgroups/cpuacct.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..9d73cc0ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/cgroups/cpuacct.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+CPU Accounting Controller
+-------------------------
+
+The CPU accounting controller is used to group tasks using cgroups and
+account the CPU usage of these groups of tasks.
+
+The CPU accounting controller supports multi-hierarchy groups. An accounting
+group accumulates the CPU usage of all of its child groups and the tasks
+directly present in its group.
+
+Accounting groups can be created by first mounting the cgroup filesystem.
+
+# mount -t cgroup -ocpuacct none /sys/fs/cgroup
+
+With the above step, the initial or the parent accounting group becomes
+visible at /sys/fs/cgroup. At bootup, this group includes all the tasks in
+the system. /sys/fs/cgroup/tasks lists the tasks in this cgroup.
+/sys/fs/cgroup/cpuacct.usage gives the CPU time (in nanoseconds) obtained
+by this group which is essentially the CPU time obtained by all the tasks
+in the system.
+
+New accounting groups can be created under the parent group /sys/fs/cgroup.
+
+# cd /sys/fs/cgroup
+# mkdir g1
+# echo $$ > g1/tasks
+
+The above steps create a new group g1 and move the current shell
+process (bash) into it. CPU time consumed by this bash and its children
+can be obtained from g1/cpuacct.usage and the same is accumulated in
+/sys/fs/cgroup/cpuacct.usage also.
+
+cpuacct.stat file lists a few statistics which further divide the
+CPU time obtained by the cgroup into user and system times. Currently
+the following statistics are supported:
+
+user: Time spent by tasks of the cgroup in user mode.
+system: Time spent by tasks of the cgroup in kernel mode.
+
+user and system are in USER_HZ unit.
+
+cpuacct controller uses percpu_counter interface to collect user and
+system times. This has two side effects:
+
+- It is theoretically possible to see wrong values for user and system times.
+ This is because percpu_counter_read() on 32bit systems isn't safe
+ against concurrent writes.
+- It is possible to see slightly outdated values for user and system times
+ due to the batch processing nature of percpu_counter.
diff --git a/Documentation/cgroups/cpusets.txt b/Documentation/cgroups/cpusets.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..fdf7dff3f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/cgroups/cpusets.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,839 @@
+ CPUSETS
+ -------
+
+Copyright (C) 2004 BULL SA.
+Written by Simon.Derr@bull.net
+
+Portions Copyright (c) 2004-2006 Silicon Graphics, Inc.
+Modified by Paul Jackson <pj@sgi.com>
+Modified by Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
+Modified by Paul Menage <menage@google.com>
+Modified by Hidetoshi Seto <seto.hidetoshi@jp.fujitsu.com>
+
+CONTENTS:
+=========
+
+1. Cpusets
+ 1.1 What are cpusets ?
+ 1.2 Why are cpusets needed ?
+ 1.3 How are cpusets implemented ?
+ 1.4 What are exclusive cpusets ?
+ 1.5 What is memory_pressure ?
+ 1.6 What is memory spread ?
+ 1.7 What is sched_load_balance ?
+ 1.8 What is sched_relax_domain_level ?
+ 1.9 How do I use cpusets ?
+2. Usage Examples and Syntax
+ 2.1 Basic Usage
+ 2.2 Adding/removing cpus
+ 2.3 Setting flags
+ 2.4 Attaching processes
+3. Questions
+4. Contact
+
+1. Cpusets
+==========
+
+1.1 What are cpusets ?
+----------------------
+
+Cpusets provide a mechanism for assigning a set of CPUs and Memory
+Nodes to a set of tasks. In this document "Memory Node" refers to
+an on-line node that contains memory.
+
+Cpusets constrain the CPU and Memory placement of tasks to only
+the resources within a task's current cpuset. They form a nested
+hierarchy visible in a virtual file system. These are the essential
+hooks, beyond what is already present, required to manage dynamic
+job placement on large systems.
+
+Cpusets use the generic cgroup subsystem described in
+Documentation/cgroups/cgroups.txt.
+
+Requests by a task, using the sched_setaffinity(2) system call to
+include CPUs in its CPU affinity mask, and using the mbind(2) and
+set_mempolicy(2) system calls to include Memory Nodes in its memory
+policy, are both filtered through that task's cpuset, filtering out any
+CPUs or Memory Nodes not in that cpuset. The scheduler will not
+schedule a task on a CPU that is not allowed in its cpus_allowed
+vector, and the kernel page allocator will not allocate a page on a
+node that is not allowed in the requesting task's mems_allowed vector.
+
+User level code may create and destroy cpusets by name in the cgroup
+virtual file system, manage the attributes and permissions of these
+cpusets and which CPUs and Memory Nodes are assigned to each cpuset,
+specify and query to which cpuset a task is assigned, and list the
+task pids assigned to a cpuset.
+
+
+1.2 Why are cpusets needed ?
+----------------------------
+
+The management of large computer systems, with many processors (CPUs),
+complex memory cache hierarchies and multiple Memory Nodes having
+non-uniform access times (NUMA) presents additional challenges for
+the efficient scheduling and memory placement of processes.
+
+Frequently more modest sized systems can be operated with adequate
+efficiency just by letting the operating system automatically share
+the available CPU and Memory resources amongst the requesting tasks.
+
+But larger systems, which benefit more from careful processor and
+memory placement to reduce memory access times and contention,
+and which typically represent a larger investment for the customer,
+can benefit from explicitly placing jobs on properly sized subsets of
+the system.
+
+This can be especially valuable on:
+
+ * Web Servers running multiple instances of the same web application,
+ * Servers running different applications (for instance, a web server
+ and a database), or
+ * NUMA systems running large HPC applications with demanding
+ performance characteristics.
+
+These subsets, or "soft partitions" must be able to be dynamically
+adjusted, as the job mix changes, without impacting other concurrently
+executing jobs. The location of the running jobs pages may also be moved
+when the memory locations are changed.
+
+The kernel cpuset patch provides the minimum essential kernel
+mechanisms required to efficiently implement such subsets. It
+leverages existing CPU and Memory Placement facilities in the Linux
+kernel to avoid any additional impact on the critical scheduler or
+memory allocator code.
+
+
+1.3 How are cpusets implemented ?
+---------------------------------
+
+Cpusets provide a Linux kernel mechanism to constrain which CPUs and
+Memory Nodes are used by a process or set of processes.
+
+The Linux kernel already has a pair of mechanisms to specify on which
+CPUs a task may be scheduled (sched_setaffinity) and on which Memory
+Nodes it may obtain memory (mbind, set_mempolicy).
+
+Cpusets extends these two mechanisms as follows:
+
+ - Cpusets are sets of allowed CPUs and Memory Nodes, known to the
+ kernel.
+ - Each task in the system is attached to a cpuset, via a pointer
+ in the task structure to a reference counted cgroup structure.
+ - Calls to sched_setaffinity are filtered to just those CPUs
+ allowed in that task's cpuset.
+ - Calls to mbind and set_mempolicy are filtered to just
+ those Memory Nodes allowed in that task's cpuset.
+ - The root cpuset contains all the systems CPUs and Memory
+ Nodes.
+ - For any cpuset, one can define child cpusets containing a subset
+ of the parents CPU and Memory Node resources.
+ - The hierarchy of cpusets can be mounted at /dev/cpuset, for
+ browsing and manipulation from user space.
+ - A cpuset may be marked exclusive, which ensures that no other
+ cpuset (except direct ancestors and descendants) may contain
+ any overlapping CPUs or Memory Nodes.
+ - You can list all the tasks (by pid) attached to any cpuset.
+
+The implementation of cpusets requires a few, simple hooks
+into the rest of the kernel, none in performance critical paths:
+
+ - in init/main.c, to initialize the root cpuset at system boot.
+ - in fork and exit, to attach and detach a task from its cpuset.
+ - in sched_setaffinity, to mask the requested CPUs by what's
+ allowed in that task's cpuset.
+ - in sched.c migrate_live_tasks(), to keep migrating tasks within
+ the CPUs allowed by their cpuset, if possible.
+ - in the mbind and set_mempolicy system calls, to mask the requested
+ Memory Nodes by what's allowed in that task's cpuset.
+ - in page_alloc.c, to restrict memory to allowed nodes.
+ - in vmscan.c, to restrict page recovery to the current cpuset.
+
+You should mount the "cgroup" filesystem type in order to enable
+browsing and modifying the cpusets presently known to the kernel. No
+new system calls are added for cpusets - all support for querying and
+modifying cpusets is via this cpuset file system.
+
+The /proc/<pid>/status file for each task has four added lines,
+displaying the task's cpus_allowed (on which CPUs it may be scheduled)
+and mems_allowed (on which Memory Nodes it may obtain memory),
+in the two formats seen in the following example:
+
+ Cpus_allowed: ffffffff,ffffffff,ffffffff,ffffffff
+ Cpus_allowed_list: 0-127
+ Mems_allowed: ffffffff,ffffffff
+ Mems_allowed_list: 0-63
+
+Each cpuset is represented by a directory in the cgroup file system
+containing (on top of the standard cgroup files) the following
+files describing that cpuset:
+
+ - cpuset.cpus: list of CPUs in that cpuset
+ - cpuset.mems: list of Memory Nodes in that cpuset
+ - cpuset.memory_migrate flag: if set, move pages to cpusets nodes
+ - cpuset.cpu_exclusive flag: is cpu placement exclusive?
+ - cpuset.mem_exclusive flag: is memory placement exclusive?
+ - cpuset.mem_hardwall flag: is memory allocation hardwalled
+ - cpuset.memory_pressure: measure of how much paging pressure in cpuset
+ - cpuset.memory_spread_page flag: if set, spread page cache evenly on allowed nodes
+ - cpuset.memory_spread_slab flag: if set, spread slab cache evenly on allowed nodes
+ - cpuset.sched_load_balance flag: if set, load balance within CPUs on that cpuset
+ - cpuset.sched_relax_domain_level: the searching range when migrating tasks
+
+In addition, only the root cpuset has the following file:
+ - cpuset.memory_pressure_enabled flag: compute memory_pressure?
+
+New cpusets are created using the mkdir system call or shell
+command. The properties of a cpuset, such as its flags, allowed
+CPUs and Memory Nodes, and attached tasks, are modified by writing
+to the appropriate file in that cpusets directory, as listed above.
+
+The named hierarchical structure of nested cpusets allows partitioning
+a large system into nested, dynamically changeable, "soft-partitions".
+
+The attachment of each task, automatically inherited at fork by any
+children of that task, to a cpuset allows organizing the work load
+on a system into related sets of tasks such that each set is constrained
+to using the CPUs and Memory Nodes of a particular cpuset. A task
+may be re-attached to any other cpuset, if allowed by the permissions
+on the necessary cpuset file system directories.
+
+Such management of a system "in the large" integrates smoothly with
+the detailed placement done on individual tasks and memory regions
+using the sched_setaffinity, mbind and set_mempolicy system calls.
+
+The following rules apply to each cpuset:
+
+ - Its CPUs and Memory Nodes must be a subset of its parents.
+ - It can't be marked exclusive unless its parent is.
+ - If its cpu or memory is exclusive, they may not overlap any sibling.
+
+These rules, and the natural hierarchy of cpusets, enable efficient
+enforcement of the exclusive guarantee, without having to scan all
+cpusets every time any of them change to ensure nothing overlaps a
+exclusive cpuset. Also, the use of a Linux virtual file system (vfs)
+to represent the cpuset hierarchy provides for a familiar permission
+and name space for cpusets, with a minimum of additional kernel code.
+
+The cpus and mems files in the root (top_cpuset) cpuset are
+read-only. The cpus file automatically tracks the value of
+cpu_online_mask using a CPU hotplug notifier, and the mems file
+automatically tracks the value of node_states[N_MEMORY]--i.e.,
+nodes with memory--using the cpuset_track_online_nodes() hook.
+
+
+1.4 What are exclusive cpusets ?
+--------------------------------
+
+If a cpuset is cpu or mem exclusive, no other cpuset, other than
+a direct ancestor or descendant, may share any of the same CPUs or
+Memory Nodes.
+
+A cpuset that is cpuset.mem_exclusive *or* cpuset.mem_hardwall is "hardwalled",
+i.e. it restricts kernel allocations for page, buffer and other data
+commonly shared by the kernel across multiple users. All cpusets,
+whether hardwalled or not, restrict allocations of memory for user
+space. This enables configuring a system so that several independent
+jobs can share common kernel data, such as file system pages, while
+isolating each job's user allocation in its own cpuset. To do this,
+construct a large mem_exclusive cpuset to hold all the jobs, and
+construct child, non-mem_exclusive cpusets for each individual job.
+Only a small amount of typical kernel memory, such as requests from
+interrupt handlers, is allowed to be taken outside even a
+mem_exclusive cpuset.
+
+
+1.5 What is memory_pressure ?
+-----------------------------
+The memory_pressure of a cpuset provides a simple per-cpuset metric
+of the rate that the tasks in a cpuset are attempting to free up in
+use memory on the nodes of the cpuset to satisfy additional memory
+requests.
+
+This enables batch managers monitoring jobs running in dedicated
+cpusets to efficiently detect what level of memory pressure that job
+is causing.
+
+This is useful both on tightly managed systems running a wide mix of
+submitted jobs, which may choose to terminate or re-prioritize jobs that
+are trying to use more memory than allowed on the nodes assigned to them,
+and with tightly coupled, long running, massively parallel scientific
+computing jobs that will dramatically fail to meet required performance
+goals if they start to use more memory than allowed to them.
+
+This mechanism provides a very economical way for the batch manager
+to monitor a cpuset for signs of memory pressure. It's up to the
+batch manager or other user code to decide what to do about it and
+take action.
+
+==> Unless this feature is enabled by writing "1" to the special file
+ /dev/cpuset/memory_pressure_enabled, the hook in the rebalance
+ code of __alloc_pages() for this metric reduces to simply noticing
+ that the cpuset_memory_pressure_enabled flag is zero. So only
+ systems that enable this feature will compute the metric.
+
+Why a per-cpuset, running average:
+
+ Because this meter is per-cpuset, rather than per-task or mm,
+ the system load imposed by a batch scheduler monitoring this
+ metric is sharply reduced on large systems, because a scan of
+ the tasklist can be avoided on each set of queries.
+
+ Because this meter is a running average, instead of an accumulating
+ counter, a batch scheduler can detect memory pressure with a
+ single read, instead of having to read and accumulate results
+ for a period of time.
+
+ Because this meter is per-cpuset rather than per-task or mm,
+ the batch scheduler can obtain the key information, memory
+ pressure in a cpuset, with a single read, rather than having to
+ query and accumulate results over all the (dynamically changing)
+ set of tasks in the cpuset.
+
+A per-cpuset simple digital filter (requires a spinlock and 3 words
+of data per-cpuset) is kept, and updated by any task attached to that
+cpuset, if it enters the synchronous (direct) page reclaim code.
+
+A per-cpuset file provides an integer number representing the recent
+(half-life of 10 seconds) rate of direct page reclaims caused by
+the tasks in the cpuset, in units of reclaims attempted per second,
+times 1000.
+
+
+1.6 What is memory spread ?
+---------------------------
+There are two boolean flag files per cpuset that control where the
+kernel allocates pages for the file system buffers and related in
+kernel data structures. They are called 'cpuset.memory_spread_page' and
+'cpuset.memory_spread_slab'.
+
+If the per-cpuset boolean flag file 'cpuset.memory_spread_page' is set, then
+the kernel will spread the file system buffers (page cache) evenly
+over all the nodes that the faulting task is allowed to use, instead
+of preferring to put those pages on the node where the task is running.
+
+If the per-cpuset boolean flag file 'cpuset.memory_spread_slab' is set,
+then the kernel will spread some file system related slab caches,
+such as for inodes and dentries evenly over all the nodes that the
+faulting task is allowed to use, instead of preferring to put those
+pages on the node where the task is running.
+
+The setting of these flags does not affect anonymous data segment or
+stack segment pages of a task.
+
+By default, both kinds of memory spreading are off, and memory
+pages are allocated on the node local to where the task is running,
+except perhaps as modified by the task's NUMA mempolicy or cpuset
+configuration, so long as sufficient free memory pages are available.
+
+When new cpusets are created, they inherit the memory spread settings
+of their parent.
+
+Setting memory spreading causes allocations for the affected page
+or slab caches to ignore the task's NUMA mempolicy and be spread
+instead. Tasks using mbind() or set_mempolicy() calls to set NUMA
+mempolicies will not notice any change in these calls as a result of
+their containing task's memory spread settings. If memory spreading
+is turned off, then the currently specified NUMA mempolicy once again
+applies to memory page allocations.
+
+Both 'cpuset.memory_spread_page' and 'cpuset.memory_spread_slab' are boolean flag
+files. By default they contain "0", meaning that the feature is off
+for that cpuset. If a "1" is written to that file, then that turns
+the named feature on.
+
+The implementation is simple.
+
+Setting the flag 'cpuset.memory_spread_page' turns on a per-process flag
+PFA_SPREAD_PAGE for each task that is in that cpuset or subsequently
+joins that cpuset. The page allocation calls for the page cache
+is modified to perform an inline check for this PFA_SPREAD_PAGE task
+flag, and if set, a call to a new routine cpuset_mem_spread_node()
+returns the node to prefer for the allocation.
+
+Similarly, setting 'cpuset.memory_spread_slab' turns on the flag
+PFA_SPREAD_SLAB, and appropriately marked slab caches will allocate
+pages from the node returned by cpuset_mem_spread_node().
+
+The cpuset_mem_spread_node() routine is also simple. It uses the
+value of a per-task rotor cpuset_mem_spread_rotor to select the next
+node in the current task's mems_allowed to prefer for the allocation.
+
+This memory placement policy is also known (in other contexts) as
+round-robin or interleave.
+
+This policy can provide substantial improvements for jobs that need
+to place thread local data on the corresponding node, but that need
+to access large file system data sets that need to be spread across
+the several nodes in the jobs cpuset in order to fit. Without this
+policy, especially for jobs that might have one thread reading in the
+data set, the memory allocation across the nodes in the jobs cpuset
+can become very uneven.
+
+1.7 What is sched_load_balance ?
+--------------------------------
+
+The kernel scheduler (kernel/sched/core.c) automatically load balances
+tasks. If one CPU is underutilized, kernel code running on that
+CPU will look for tasks on other more overloaded CPUs and move those
+tasks to itself, within the constraints of such placement mechanisms
+as cpusets and sched_setaffinity.
+
+The algorithmic cost of load balancing and its impact on key shared
+kernel data structures such as the task list increases more than
+linearly with the number of CPUs being balanced. So the scheduler
+has support to partition the systems CPUs into a number of sched
+domains such that it only load balances within each sched domain.
+Each sched domain covers some subset of the CPUs in the system;
+no two sched domains overlap; some CPUs might not be in any sched
+domain and hence won't be load balanced.
+
+Put simply, it costs less to balance between two smaller sched domains
+than one big one, but doing so means that overloads in one of the
+two domains won't be load balanced to the other one.
+
+By default, there is one sched domain covering all CPUs, including those
+marked isolated using the kernel boot time "isolcpus=" argument. However,
+the isolated CPUs will not participate in load balancing, and will not
+have tasks running on them unless explicitly assigned.
+
+This default load balancing across all CPUs is not well suited for
+the following two situations:
+ 1) On large systems, load balancing across many CPUs is expensive.
+ If the system is managed using cpusets to place independent jobs
+ on separate sets of CPUs, full load balancing is unnecessary.
+ 2) Systems supporting realtime on some CPUs need to minimize
+ system overhead on those CPUs, including avoiding task load
+ balancing if that is not needed.
+
+When the per-cpuset flag "cpuset.sched_load_balance" is enabled (the default
+setting), it requests that all the CPUs in that cpusets allowed 'cpuset.cpus'
+be contained in a single sched domain, ensuring that load balancing
+can move a task (not otherwised pinned, as by sched_setaffinity)
+from any CPU in that cpuset to any other.
+
+When the per-cpuset flag "cpuset.sched_load_balance" is disabled, then the
+scheduler will avoid load balancing across the CPUs in that cpuset,
+--except-- in so far as is necessary because some overlapping cpuset
+has "sched_load_balance" enabled.
+
+So, for example, if the top cpuset has the flag "cpuset.sched_load_balance"
+enabled, then the scheduler will have one sched domain covering all
+CPUs, and the setting of the "cpuset.sched_load_balance" flag in any other
+cpusets won't matter, as we're already fully load balancing.
+
+Therefore in the above two situations, the top cpuset flag
+"cpuset.sched_load_balance" should be disabled, and only some of the smaller,
+child cpusets have this flag enabled.
+
+When doing this, you don't usually want to leave any unpinned tasks in
+the top cpuset that might use non-trivial amounts of CPU, as such tasks
+may be artificially constrained to some subset of CPUs, depending on
+the particulars of this flag setting in descendant cpusets. Even if
+such a task could use spare CPU cycles in some other CPUs, the kernel
+scheduler might not consider the possibility of load balancing that
+task to that underused CPU.
+
+Of course, tasks pinned to a particular CPU can be left in a cpuset
+that disables "cpuset.sched_load_balance" as those tasks aren't going anywhere
+else anyway.
+
+There is an impedance mismatch here, between cpusets and sched domains.
+Cpusets are hierarchical and nest. Sched domains are flat; they don't
+overlap and each CPU is in at most one sched domain.
+
+It is necessary for sched domains to be flat because load balancing
+across partially overlapping sets of CPUs would risk unstable dynamics
+that would be beyond our understanding. So if each of two partially
+overlapping cpusets enables the flag 'cpuset.sched_load_balance', then we
+form a single sched domain that is a superset of both. We won't move
+a task to a CPU outside its cpuset, but the scheduler load balancing
+code might waste some compute cycles considering that possibility.
+
+This mismatch is why there is not a simple one-to-one relation
+between which cpusets have the flag "cpuset.sched_load_balance" enabled,
+and the sched domain configuration. If a cpuset enables the flag, it
+will get balancing across all its CPUs, but if it disables the flag,
+it will only be assured of no load balancing if no other overlapping
+cpuset enables the flag.
+
+If two cpusets have partially overlapping 'cpuset.cpus' allowed, and only
+one of them has this flag enabled, then the other may find its
+tasks only partially load balanced, just on the overlapping CPUs.
+This is just the general case of the top_cpuset example given a few
+paragraphs above. In the general case, as in the top cpuset case,
+don't leave tasks that might use non-trivial amounts of CPU in
+such partially load balanced cpusets, as they may be artificially
+constrained to some subset of the CPUs allowed to them, for lack of
+load balancing to the other CPUs.
+
+CPUs in "cpuset.isolcpus" were excluded from load balancing by the
+isolcpus= kernel boot option, and will never be load balanced regardless
+of the value of "cpuset.sched_load_balance" in any cpuset.
+
+1.7.1 sched_load_balance implementation details.
+------------------------------------------------
+
+The per-cpuset flag 'cpuset.sched_load_balance' defaults to enabled (contrary
+to most cpuset flags.) When enabled for a cpuset, the kernel will
+ensure that it can load balance across all the CPUs in that cpuset
+(makes sure that all the CPUs in the cpus_allowed of that cpuset are
+in the same sched domain.)
+
+If two overlapping cpusets both have 'cpuset.sched_load_balance' enabled,
+then they will be (must be) both in the same sched domain.
+
+If, as is the default, the top cpuset has 'cpuset.sched_load_balance' enabled,
+then by the above that means there is a single sched domain covering
+the whole system, regardless of any other cpuset settings.
+
+The kernel commits to user space that it will avoid load balancing
+where it can. It will pick as fine a granularity partition of sched
+domains as it can while still providing load balancing for any set
+of CPUs allowed to a cpuset having 'cpuset.sched_load_balance' enabled.
+
+The internal kernel cpuset to scheduler interface passes from the
+cpuset code to the scheduler code a partition of the load balanced
+CPUs in the system. This partition is a set of subsets (represented
+as an array of struct cpumask) of CPUs, pairwise disjoint, that cover
+all the CPUs that must be load balanced.
+
+The cpuset code builds a new such partition and passes it to the
+scheduler sched domain setup code, to have the sched domains rebuilt
+as necessary, whenever:
+ - the 'cpuset.sched_load_balance' flag of a cpuset with non-empty CPUs changes,
+ - or CPUs come or go from a cpuset with this flag enabled,
+ - or 'cpuset.sched_relax_domain_level' value of a cpuset with non-empty CPUs
+ and with this flag enabled changes,
+ - or a cpuset with non-empty CPUs and with this flag enabled is removed,
+ - or a cpu is offlined/onlined.
+
+This partition exactly defines what sched domains the scheduler should
+setup - one sched domain for each element (struct cpumask) in the
+partition.
+
+The scheduler remembers the currently active sched domain partitions.
+When the scheduler routine partition_sched_domains() is invoked from
+the cpuset code to update these sched domains, it compares the new
+partition requested with the current, and updates its sched domains,
+removing the old and adding the new, for each change.
+
+
+1.8 What is sched_relax_domain_level ?
+--------------------------------------
+
+In sched domain, the scheduler migrates tasks in 2 ways; periodic load
+balance on tick, and at time of some schedule events.
+
+When a task is woken up, scheduler try to move the task on idle CPU.
+For example, if a task A running on CPU X activates another task B
+on the same CPU X, and if CPU Y is X's sibling and performing idle,
+then scheduler migrate task B to CPU Y so that task B can start on
+CPU Y without waiting task A on CPU X.
+
+And if a CPU run out of tasks in its runqueue, the CPU try to pull
+extra tasks from other busy CPUs to help them before it is going to
+be idle.
+
+Of course it takes some searching cost to find movable tasks and/or
+idle CPUs, the scheduler might not search all CPUs in the domain
+every time. In fact, in some architectures, the searching ranges on
+events are limited in the same socket or node where the CPU locates,
+while the load balance on tick searches all.
+
+For example, assume CPU Z is relatively far from CPU X. Even if CPU Z
+is idle while CPU X and the siblings are busy, scheduler can't migrate
+woken task B from X to Z since it is out of its searching range.
+As the result, task B on CPU X need to wait task A or wait load balance
+on the next tick. For some applications in special situation, waiting
+1 tick may be too long.
+
+The 'cpuset.sched_relax_domain_level' file allows you to request changing
+this searching range as you like. This file takes int value which
+indicates size of searching range in levels ideally as follows,
+otherwise initial value -1 that indicates the cpuset has no request.
+
+ -1 : no request. use system default or follow request of others.
+ 0 : no search.
+ 1 : search siblings (hyperthreads in a core).
+ 2 : search cores in a package.
+ 3 : search cpus in a node [= system wide on non-NUMA system]
+ 4 : search nodes in a chunk of node [on NUMA system]
+ 5 : search system wide [on NUMA system]
+
+The system default is architecture dependent. The system default
+can be changed using the relax_domain_level= boot parameter.
+
+This file is per-cpuset and affect the sched domain where the cpuset
+belongs to. Therefore if the flag 'cpuset.sched_load_balance' of a cpuset
+is disabled, then 'cpuset.sched_relax_domain_level' have no effect since
+there is no sched domain belonging the cpuset.
+
+If multiple cpusets are overlapping and hence they form a single sched
+domain, the largest value among those is used. Be careful, if one
+requests 0 and others are -1 then 0 is used.
+
+Note that modifying this file will have both good and bad effects,
+and whether it is acceptable or not depends on your situation.
+Don't modify this file if you are not sure.
+
+If your situation is:
+ - The migration costs between each cpu can be assumed considerably
+ small(for you) due to your special application's behavior or
+ special hardware support for CPU cache etc.
+ - The searching cost doesn't have impact(for you) or you can make
+ the searching cost enough small by managing cpuset to compact etc.
+ - The latency is required even it sacrifices cache hit rate etc.
+then increasing 'sched_relax_domain_level' would benefit you.
+
+
+1.9 How do I use cpusets ?
+--------------------------
+
+In order to minimize the impact of cpusets on critical kernel
+code, such as the scheduler, and due to the fact that the kernel
+does not support one task updating the memory placement of another
+task directly, the impact on a task of changing its cpuset CPU
+or Memory Node placement, or of changing to which cpuset a task
+is attached, is subtle.
+
+If a cpuset has its Memory Nodes modified, then for each task attached
+to that cpuset, the next time that the kernel attempts to allocate
+a page of memory for that task, the kernel will notice the change
+in the task's cpuset, and update its per-task memory placement to
+remain within the new cpusets memory placement. If the task was using
+mempolicy MPOL_BIND, and the nodes to which it was bound overlap with
+its new cpuset, then the task will continue to use whatever subset
+of MPOL_BIND nodes are still allowed in the new cpuset. If the task
+was using MPOL_BIND and now none of its MPOL_BIND nodes are allowed
+in the new cpuset, then the task will be essentially treated as if it
+was MPOL_BIND bound to the new cpuset (even though its NUMA placement,
+as queried by get_mempolicy(), doesn't change). If a task is moved
+from one cpuset to another, then the kernel will adjust the task's
+memory placement, as above, the next time that the kernel attempts
+to allocate a page of memory for that task.
+
+If a cpuset has its 'cpuset.cpus' modified, then each task in that cpuset
+will have its allowed CPU placement changed immediately. Similarly,
+if a task's pid is written to another cpusets 'cpuset.tasks' file, then its
+allowed CPU placement is changed immediately. If such a task had been
+bound to some subset of its cpuset using the sched_setaffinity() call,
+the task will be allowed to run on any CPU allowed in its new cpuset,
+negating the effect of the prior sched_setaffinity() call.
+
+In summary, the memory placement of a task whose cpuset is changed is
+updated by the kernel, on the next allocation of a page for that task,
+and the processor placement is updated immediately.
+
+Normally, once a page is allocated (given a physical page
+of main memory) then that page stays on whatever node it
+was allocated, so long as it remains allocated, even if the
+cpusets memory placement policy 'cpuset.mems' subsequently changes.
+If the cpuset flag file 'cpuset.memory_migrate' is set true, then when
+tasks are attached to that cpuset, any pages that task had
+allocated to it on nodes in its previous cpuset are migrated
+to the task's new cpuset. The relative placement of the page within
+the cpuset is preserved during these migration operations if possible.
+For example if the page was on the second valid node of the prior cpuset
+then the page will be placed on the second valid node of the new cpuset.
+
+Also if 'cpuset.memory_migrate' is set true, then if that cpuset's
+'cpuset.mems' file is modified, pages allocated to tasks in that
+cpuset, that were on nodes in the previous setting of 'cpuset.mems',
+will be moved to nodes in the new setting of 'mems.'
+Pages that were not in the task's prior cpuset, or in the cpuset's
+prior 'cpuset.mems' setting, will not be moved.
+
+There is an exception to the above. If hotplug functionality is used
+to remove all the CPUs that are currently assigned to a cpuset,
+then all the tasks in that cpuset will be moved to the nearest ancestor
+with non-empty cpus. But the moving of some (or all) tasks might fail if
+cpuset is bound with another cgroup subsystem which has some restrictions
+on task attaching. In this failing case, those tasks will stay
+in the original cpuset, and the kernel will automatically update
+their cpus_allowed to allow all online CPUs. When memory hotplug
+functionality for removing Memory Nodes is available, a similar exception
+is expected to apply there as well. In general, the kernel prefers to
+violate cpuset placement, over starving a task that has had all
+its allowed CPUs or Memory Nodes taken offline.
+
+There is a second exception to the above. GFP_ATOMIC requests are
+kernel internal allocations that must be satisfied, immediately.
+The kernel may drop some request, in rare cases even panic, if a
+GFP_ATOMIC alloc fails. If the request cannot be satisfied within
+the current task's cpuset, then we relax the cpuset, and look for
+memory anywhere we can find it. It's better to violate the cpuset
+than stress the kernel.
+
+To start a new job that is to be contained within a cpuset, the steps are:
+
+ 1) mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset
+ 2) mount -t cgroup -ocpuset cpuset /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset
+ 3) Create the new cpuset by doing mkdir's and write's (or echo's) in
+ the /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset virtual file system.
+ 4) Start a task that will be the "founding father" of the new job.
+ 5) Attach that task to the new cpuset by writing its pid to the
+ /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset tasks file for that cpuset.
+ 6) fork, exec or clone the job tasks from this founding father task.
+
+For example, the following sequence of commands will setup a cpuset
+named "Charlie", containing just CPUs 2 and 3, and Memory Node 1,
+and then start a subshell 'sh' in that cpuset:
+
+ mount -t cgroup -ocpuset cpuset /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset
+ cd /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset
+ mkdir Charlie
+ cd Charlie
+ /bin/echo 2-3 > cpuset.cpus
+ /bin/echo 1 > cpuset.mems
+ /bin/echo $$ > tasks
+ sh
+ # The subshell 'sh' is now running in cpuset Charlie
+ # The next line should display '/Charlie'
+ cat /proc/self/cpuset
+
+There are ways to query or modify cpusets:
+ - via the cpuset file system directly, using the various cd, mkdir, echo,
+ cat, rmdir commands from the shell, or their equivalent from C.
+ - via the C library libcpuset.
+ - via the C library libcgroup.
+ (http://sourceforge.net/projects/libcg/)
+ - via the python application cset.
+ (http://code.google.com/p/cpuset/)
+
+The sched_setaffinity calls can also be done at the shell prompt using
+SGI's runon or Robert Love's taskset. The mbind and set_mempolicy
+calls can be done at the shell prompt using the numactl command
+(part of Andi Kleen's numa package).
+
+2. Usage Examples and Syntax
+============================
+
+2.1 Basic Usage
+---------------
+
+Creating, modifying, using the cpusets can be done through the cpuset
+virtual filesystem.
+
+To mount it, type:
+# mount -t cgroup -o cpuset cpuset /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset
+
+Then under /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset you can find a tree that corresponds to the
+tree of the cpusets in the system. For instance, /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset
+is the cpuset that holds the whole system.
+
+If you want to create a new cpuset under /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset:
+# cd /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset
+# mkdir my_cpuset
+
+Now you want to do something with this cpuset.
+# cd my_cpuset
+
+In this directory you can find several files:
+# ls
+cgroup.clone_children cpuset.memory_pressure
+cgroup.event_control cpuset.memory_spread_page
+cgroup.procs cpuset.memory_spread_slab
+cpuset.cpu_exclusive cpuset.mems
+cpuset.cpus cpuset.sched_load_balance
+cpuset.mem_exclusive cpuset.sched_relax_domain_level
+cpuset.mem_hardwall notify_on_release
+cpuset.memory_migrate tasks
+
+Reading them will give you information about the state of this cpuset:
+the CPUs and Memory Nodes it can use, the processes that are using
+it, its properties. By writing to these files you can manipulate
+the cpuset.
+
+Set some flags:
+# /bin/echo 1 > cpuset.cpu_exclusive
+
+Add some cpus:
+# /bin/echo 0-7 > cpuset.cpus
+
+Add some mems:
+# /bin/echo 0-7 > cpuset.mems
+
+Now attach your shell to this cpuset:
+# /bin/echo $$ > tasks
+
+You can also create cpusets inside your cpuset by using mkdir in this
+directory.
+# mkdir my_sub_cs
+
+To remove a cpuset, just use rmdir:
+# rmdir my_sub_cs
+This will fail if the cpuset is in use (has cpusets inside, or has
+processes attached).
+
+Note that for legacy reasons, the "cpuset" filesystem exists as a
+wrapper around the cgroup filesystem.
+
+The command
+
+mount -t cpuset X /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset
+
+is equivalent to
+
+mount -t cgroup -ocpuset,noprefix X /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset
+echo "/sbin/cpuset_release_agent" > /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset/release_agent
+
+2.2 Adding/removing cpus
+------------------------
+
+This is the syntax to use when writing in the cpus or mems files
+in cpuset directories:
+
+# /bin/echo 1-4 > cpuset.cpus -> set cpus list to cpus 1,2,3,4
+# /bin/echo 1,2,3,4 > cpuset.cpus -> set cpus list to cpus 1,2,3,4
+
+To add a CPU to a cpuset, write the new list of CPUs including the
+CPU to be added. To add 6 to the above cpuset:
+
+# /bin/echo 1-4,6 > cpuset.cpus -> set cpus list to cpus 1,2,3,4,6
+
+Similarly to remove a CPU from a cpuset, write the new list of CPUs
+without the CPU to be removed.
+
+To remove all the CPUs:
+
+# /bin/echo "" > cpuset.cpus -> clear cpus list
+
+2.3 Setting flags
+-----------------
+
+The syntax is very simple:
+
+# /bin/echo 1 > cpuset.cpu_exclusive -> set flag 'cpuset.cpu_exclusive'
+# /bin/echo 0 > cpuset.cpu_exclusive -> unset flag 'cpuset.cpu_exclusive'
+
+2.4 Attaching processes
+-----------------------
+
+# /bin/echo PID > tasks
+
+Note that it is PID, not PIDs. You can only attach ONE task at a time.
+If you have several tasks to attach, you have to do it one after another:
+
+# /bin/echo PID1 > tasks
+# /bin/echo PID2 > tasks
+ ...
+# /bin/echo PIDn > tasks
+
+
+3. Questions
+============
+
+Q: what's up with this '/bin/echo' ?
+A: bash's builtin 'echo' command does not check calls to write() against
+ errors. If you use it in the cpuset file system, you won't be
+ able to tell whether a command succeeded or failed.
+
+Q: When I attach processes, only the first of the line gets really attached !
+A: We can only return one error code per call to write(). So you should also
+ put only ONE pid.
+
+4. Contact
+==========
+
+Web: http://www.bullopensource.org/cpuset
diff --git a/Documentation/cgroups/devices.txt b/Documentation/cgroups/devices.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..3c1095ca0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/cgroups/devices.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,116 @@
+Device Whitelist Controller
+
+1. Description:
+
+Implement a cgroup to track and enforce open and mknod restrictions
+on device files. A device cgroup associates a device access
+whitelist with each cgroup. A whitelist entry has 4 fields.
+'type' is a (all), c (char), or b (block). 'all' means it applies
+to all types and all major and minor numbers. Major and minor are
+either an integer or * for all. Access is a composition of r
+(read), w (write), and m (mknod).
+
+The root device cgroup starts with rwm to 'all'. A child device
+cgroup gets a copy of the parent. Administrators can then remove
+devices from the whitelist or add new entries. A child cgroup can
+never receive a device access which is denied by its parent.
+
+2. User Interface
+
+An entry is added using devices.allow, and removed using
+devices.deny. For instance
+
+ echo 'c 1:3 mr' > /sys/fs/cgroup/1/devices.allow
+
+allows cgroup 1 to read and mknod the device usually known as
+/dev/null. Doing
+
+ echo a > /sys/fs/cgroup/1/devices.deny
+
+will remove the default 'a *:* rwm' entry. Doing
+
+ echo a > /sys/fs/cgroup/1/devices.allow
+
+will add the 'a *:* rwm' entry to the whitelist.
+
+3. Security
+
+Any task can move itself between cgroups. This clearly won't
+suffice, but we can decide the best way to adequately restrict
+movement as people get some experience with this. We may just want
+to require CAP_SYS_ADMIN, which at least is a separate bit from
+CAP_MKNOD. We may want to just refuse moving to a cgroup which
+isn't a descendant of the current one. Or we may want to use
+CAP_MAC_ADMIN, since we really are trying to lock down root.
+
+CAP_SYS_ADMIN is needed to modify the whitelist or move another
+task to a new cgroup. (Again we'll probably want to change that).
+
+A cgroup may not be granted more permissions than the cgroup's
+parent has.
+
+4. Hierarchy
+
+device cgroups maintain hierarchy by making sure a cgroup never has more
+access permissions than its parent. Every time an entry is written to
+a cgroup's devices.deny file, all its children will have that entry removed
+from their whitelist and all the locally set whitelist entries will be
+re-evaluated. In case one of the locally set whitelist entries would provide
+more access than the cgroup's parent, it'll be removed from the whitelist.
+
+Example:
+ A
+ / \
+ B
+
+ group behavior exceptions
+ A allow "b 8:* rwm", "c 116:1 rw"
+ B deny "c 1:3 rwm", "c 116:2 rwm", "b 3:* rwm"
+
+If a device is denied in group A:
+ # echo "c 116:* r" > A/devices.deny
+it'll propagate down and after revalidating B's entries, the whitelist entry
+"c 116:2 rwm" will be removed:
+
+ group whitelist entries denied devices
+ A all "b 8:* rwm", "c 116:* rw"
+ B "c 1:3 rwm", "b 3:* rwm" all the rest
+
+In case parent's exceptions change and local exceptions are not allowed
+anymore, they'll be deleted.
+
+Notice that new whitelist entries will not be propagated:
+ A
+ / \
+ B
+
+ group whitelist entries denied devices
+ A "c 1:3 rwm", "c 1:5 r" all the rest
+ B "c 1:3 rwm", "c 1:5 r" all the rest
+
+when adding "c *:3 rwm":
+ # echo "c *:3 rwm" >A/devices.allow
+
+the result:
+ group whitelist entries denied devices
+ A "c *:3 rwm", "c 1:5 r" all the rest
+ B "c 1:3 rwm", "c 1:5 r" all the rest
+
+but now it'll be possible to add new entries to B:
+ # echo "c 2:3 rwm" >B/devices.allow
+ # echo "c 50:3 r" >B/devices.allow
+or even
+ # echo "c *:3 rwm" >B/devices.allow
+
+Allowing or denying all by writing 'a' to devices.allow or devices.deny will
+not be possible once the device cgroups has children.
+
+4.1 Hierarchy (internal implementation)
+
+device cgroups is implemented internally using a behavior (ALLOW, DENY) and a
+list of exceptions. The internal state is controlled using the same user
+interface to preserve compatibility with the previous whitelist-only
+implementation. Removal or addition of exceptions that will reduce the access
+to devices will be propagated down the hierarchy.
+For every propagated exception, the effective rules will be re-evaluated based
+on current parent's access rules.
diff --git a/Documentation/cgroups/freezer-subsystem.txt b/Documentation/cgroups/freezer-subsystem.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..c96a72cbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/cgroups/freezer-subsystem.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,123 @@
+The cgroup freezer is useful to batch job management system which start
+and stop sets of tasks in order to schedule the resources of a machine
+according to the desires of a system administrator. This sort of program
+is often used on HPC clusters to schedule access to the cluster as a
+whole. The cgroup freezer uses cgroups to describe the set of tasks to
+be started/stopped by the batch job management system. It also provides
+a means to start and stop the tasks composing the job.
+
+The cgroup freezer will also be useful for checkpointing running groups
+of tasks. The freezer allows the checkpoint code to obtain a consistent
+image of the tasks by attempting to force the tasks in a cgroup into a
+quiescent state. Once the tasks are quiescent another task can
+walk /proc or invoke a kernel interface to gather information about the
+quiesced tasks. Checkpointed tasks can be restarted later should a
+recoverable error occur. This also allows the checkpointed tasks to be
+migrated between nodes in a cluster by copying the gathered information
+to another node and restarting the tasks there.
+
+Sequences of SIGSTOP and SIGCONT are not always sufficient for stopping
+and resuming tasks in userspace. Both of these signals are observable
+from within the tasks we wish to freeze. While SIGSTOP cannot be caught,
+blocked, or ignored it can be seen by waiting or ptracing parent tasks.
+SIGCONT is especially unsuitable since it can be caught by the task. Any
+programs designed to watch for SIGSTOP and SIGCONT could be broken by
+attempting to use SIGSTOP and SIGCONT to stop and resume tasks. We can
+demonstrate this problem using nested bash shells:
+
+ $ echo $$
+ 16644
+ $ bash
+ $ echo $$
+ 16690
+
+ From a second, unrelated bash shell:
+ $ kill -SIGSTOP 16690
+ $ kill -SIGCONT 16690
+
+ <at this point 16690 exits and causes 16644 to exit too>
+
+This happens because bash can observe both signals and choose how it
+responds to them.
+
+Another example of a program which catches and responds to these
+signals is gdb. In fact any program designed to use ptrace is likely to
+have a problem with this method of stopping and resuming tasks.
+
+In contrast, the cgroup freezer uses the kernel freezer code to
+prevent the freeze/unfreeze cycle from becoming visible to the tasks
+being frozen. This allows the bash example above and gdb to run as
+expected.
+
+The cgroup freezer is hierarchical. Freezing a cgroup freezes all
+tasks beloning to the cgroup and all its descendant cgroups. Each
+cgroup has its own state (self-state) and the state inherited from the
+parent (parent-state). Iff both states are THAWED, the cgroup is
+THAWED.
+
+The following cgroupfs files are created by cgroup freezer.
+
+* freezer.state: Read-write.
+
+ When read, returns the effective state of the cgroup - "THAWED",
+ "FREEZING" or "FROZEN". This is the combined self and parent-states.
+ If any is freezing, the cgroup is freezing (FREEZING or FROZEN).
+
+ FREEZING cgroup transitions into FROZEN state when all tasks
+ belonging to the cgroup and its descendants become frozen. Note that
+ a cgroup reverts to FREEZING from FROZEN after a new task is added
+ to the cgroup or one of its descendant cgroups until the new task is
+ frozen.
+
+ When written, sets the self-state of the cgroup. Two values are
+ allowed - "FROZEN" and "THAWED". If FROZEN is written, the cgroup,
+ if not already freezing, enters FREEZING state along with all its
+ descendant cgroups.
+
+ If THAWED is written, the self-state of the cgroup is changed to
+ THAWED. Note that the effective state may not change to THAWED if
+ the parent-state is still freezing. If a cgroup's effective state
+ becomes THAWED, all its descendants which are freezing because of
+ the cgroup also leave the freezing state.
+
+* freezer.self_freezing: Read only.
+
+ Shows the self-state. 0 if the self-state is THAWED; otherwise, 1.
+ This value is 1 iff the last write to freezer.state was "FROZEN".
+
+* freezer.parent_freezing: Read only.
+
+ Shows the parent-state. 0 if none of the cgroup's ancestors is
+ frozen; otherwise, 1.
+
+The root cgroup is non-freezable and the above interface files don't
+exist.
+
+* Examples of usage :
+
+ # mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer
+ # mount -t cgroup -ofreezer freezer /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer
+ # mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/0
+ # echo $some_pid > /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/0/tasks
+
+to get status of the freezer subsystem :
+
+ # cat /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/0/freezer.state
+ THAWED
+
+to freeze all tasks in the container :
+
+ # echo FROZEN > /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/0/freezer.state
+ # cat /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/0/freezer.state
+ FREEZING
+ # cat /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/0/freezer.state
+ FROZEN
+
+to unfreeze all tasks in the container :
+
+ # echo THAWED > /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/0/freezer.state
+ # cat /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/0/freezer.state
+ THAWED
+
+This is the basic mechanism which should do the right thing for user space task
+in a simple scenario.
diff --git a/Documentation/cgroups/hugetlb.txt b/Documentation/cgroups/hugetlb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..106245c3a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/cgroups/hugetlb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
+HugeTLB Controller
+-------------------
+
+The HugeTLB controller allows to limit the HugeTLB usage per control group and
+enforces the controller limit during page fault. Since HugeTLB doesn't
+support page reclaim, enforcing the limit at page fault time implies that,
+the application will get SIGBUS signal if it tries to access HugeTLB pages
+beyond its limit. This requires the application to know beforehand how much
+HugeTLB pages it would require for its use.
+
+HugeTLB controller can be created by first mounting the cgroup filesystem.
+
+# mount -t cgroup -o hugetlb none /sys/fs/cgroup
+
+With the above step, the initial or the parent HugeTLB group becomes
+visible at /sys/fs/cgroup. At bootup, this group includes all the tasks in
+the system. /sys/fs/cgroup/tasks lists the tasks in this cgroup.
+
+New groups can be created under the parent group /sys/fs/cgroup.
+
+# cd /sys/fs/cgroup
+# mkdir g1
+# echo $$ > g1/tasks
+
+The above steps create a new group g1 and move the current shell
+process (bash) into it.
+
+Brief summary of control files
+
+ hugetlb.<hugepagesize>.limit_in_bytes # set/show limit of "hugepagesize" hugetlb usage
+ hugetlb.<hugepagesize>.max_usage_in_bytes # show max "hugepagesize" hugetlb usage recorded
+ hugetlb.<hugepagesize>.usage_in_bytes # show current usage for "hugepagesize" hugetlb
+ hugetlb.<hugepagesize>.failcnt # show the number of allocation failure due to HugeTLB limit
+
+For a system supporting two hugepage size (16M and 16G) the control
+files include:
+
+hugetlb.16GB.limit_in_bytes
+hugetlb.16GB.max_usage_in_bytes
+hugetlb.16GB.usage_in_bytes
+hugetlb.16GB.failcnt
+hugetlb.16MB.limit_in_bytes
+hugetlb.16MB.max_usage_in_bytes
+hugetlb.16MB.usage_in_bytes
+hugetlb.16MB.failcnt
diff --git a/Documentation/cgroups/memcg_test.txt b/Documentation/cgroups/memcg_test.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..8870b0212
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/cgroups/memcg_test.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,280 @@
+Memory Resource Controller(Memcg) Implementation Memo.
+Last Updated: 2010/2
+Base Kernel Version: based on 2.6.33-rc7-mm(candidate for 34).
+
+Because VM is getting complex (one of reasons is memcg...), memcg's behavior
+is complex. This is a document for memcg's internal behavior.
+Please note that implementation details can be changed.
+
+(*) Topics on API should be in Documentation/cgroups/memory.txt)
+
+0. How to record usage ?
+ 2 objects are used.
+
+ page_cgroup ....an object per page.
+ Allocated at boot or memory hotplug. Freed at memory hot removal.
+
+ swap_cgroup ... an entry per swp_entry.
+ Allocated at swapon(). Freed at swapoff().
+
+ The page_cgroup has USED bit and double count against a page_cgroup never
+ occurs. swap_cgroup is used only when a charged page is swapped-out.
+
+1. Charge
+
+ a page/swp_entry may be charged (usage += PAGE_SIZE) at
+
+ mem_cgroup_try_charge()
+
+2. Uncharge
+ a page/swp_entry may be uncharged (usage -= PAGE_SIZE) by
+
+ mem_cgroup_uncharge()
+ Called when a page's refcount goes down to 0.
+
+ mem_cgroup_uncharge_swap()
+ Called when swp_entry's refcnt goes down to 0. A charge against swap
+ disappears.
+
+3. charge-commit-cancel
+ Memcg pages are charged in two steps:
+ mem_cgroup_try_charge()
+ mem_cgroup_commit_charge() or mem_cgroup_cancel_charge()
+
+ At try_charge(), there are no flags to say "this page is charged".
+ at this point, usage += PAGE_SIZE.
+
+ At commit(), the page is associated with the memcg.
+
+ At cancel(), simply usage -= PAGE_SIZE.
+
+Under below explanation, we assume CONFIG_MEM_RES_CTRL_SWAP=y.
+
+4. Anonymous
+ Anonymous page is newly allocated at
+ - page fault into MAP_ANONYMOUS mapping.
+ - Copy-On-Write.
+
+ 4.1 Swap-in.
+ At swap-in, the page is taken from swap-cache. There are 2 cases.
+
+ (a) If the SwapCache is newly allocated and read, it has no charges.
+ (b) If the SwapCache has been mapped by processes, it has been
+ charged already.
+
+ 4.2 Swap-out.
+ At swap-out, typical state transition is below.
+
+ (a) add to swap cache. (marked as SwapCache)
+ swp_entry's refcnt += 1.
+ (b) fully unmapped.
+ swp_entry's refcnt += # of ptes.
+ (c) write back to swap.
+ (d) delete from swap cache. (remove from SwapCache)
+ swp_entry's refcnt -= 1.
+
+
+ Finally, at task exit,
+ (e) zap_pte() is called and swp_entry's refcnt -=1 -> 0.
+
+5. Page Cache
+ Page Cache is charged at
+ - add_to_page_cache_locked().
+
+ The logic is very clear. (About migration, see below)
+ Note: __remove_from_page_cache() is called by remove_from_page_cache()
+ and __remove_mapping().
+
+6. Shmem(tmpfs) Page Cache
+ The best way to understand shmem's page state transition is to read
+ mm/shmem.c.
+ But brief explanation of the behavior of memcg around shmem will be
+ helpful to understand the logic.
+
+ Shmem's page (just leaf page, not direct/indirect block) can be on
+ - radix-tree of shmem's inode.
+ - SwapCache.
+ - Both on radix-tree and SwapCache. This happens at swap-in
+ and swap-out,
+
+ It's charged when...
+ - A new page is added to shmem's radix-tree.
+ - A swp page is read. (move a charge from swap_cgroup to page_cgroup)
+
+7. Page Migration
+
+ mem_cgroup_migrate()
+
+8. LRU
+ Each memcg has its own private LRU. Now, its handling is under global
+ VM's control (means that it's handled under global zone->lru_lock).
+ Almost all routines around memcg's LRU is called by global LRU's
+ list management functions under zone->lru_lock().
+
+ A special function is mem_cgroup_isolate_pages(). This scans
+ memcg's private LRU and call __isolate_lru_page() to extract a page
+ from LRU.
+ (By __isolate_lru_page(), the page is removed from both of global and
+ private LRU.)
+
+
+9. Typical Tests.
+
+ Tests for racy cases.
+
+ 9.1 Small limit to memcg.
+ When you do test to do racy case, it's good test to set memcg's limit
+ to be very small rather than GB. Many races found in the test under
+ xKB or xxMB limits.
+ (Memory behavior under GB and Memory behavior under MB shows very
+ different situation.)
+
+ 9.2 Shmem
+ Historically, memcg's shmem handling was poor and we saw some amount
+ of troubles here. This is because shmem is page-cache but can be
+ SwapCache. Test with shmem/tmpfs is always good test.
+
+ 9.3 Migration
+ For NUMA, migration is an another special case. To do easy test, cpuset
+ is useful. Following is a sample script to do migration.
+
+ mount -t cgroup -o cpuset none /opt/cpuset
+
+ mkdir /opt/cpuset/01
+ echo 1 > /opt/cpuset/01/cpuset.cpus
+ echo 0 > /opt/cpuset/01/cpuset.mems
+ echo 1 > /opt/cpuset/01/cpuset.memory_migrate
+ mkdir /opt/cpuset/02
+ echo 1 > /opt/cpuset/02/cpuset.cpus
+ echo 1 > /opt/cpuset/02/cpuset.mems
+ echo 1 > /opt/cpuset/02/cpuset.memory_migrate
+
+ In above set, when you moves a task from 01 to 02, page migration to
+ node 0 to node 1 will occur. Following is a script to migrate all
+ under cpuset.
+ --
+ move_task()
+ {
+ for pid in $1
+ do
+ /bin/echo $pid >$2/tasks 2>/dev/null
+ echo -n $pid
+ echo -n " "
+ done
+ echo END
+ }
+
+ G1_TASK=`cat ${G1}/tasks`
+ G2_TASK=`cat ${G2}/tasks`
+ move_task "${G1_TASK}" ${G2} &
+ --
+ 9.4 Memory hotplug.
+ memory hotplug test is one of good test.
+ to offline memory, do following.
+ # echo offline > /sys/devices/system/memory/memoryXXX/state
+ (XXX is the place of memory)
+ This is an easy way to test page migration, too.
+
+ 9.5 mkdir/rmdir
+ When using hierarchy, mkdir/rmdir test should be done.
+ Use tests like the following.
+
+ echo 1 >/opt/cgroup/01/memory/use_hierarchy
+ mkdir /opt/cgroup/01/child_a
+ mkdir /opt/cgroup/01/child_b
+
+ set limit to 01.
+ add limit to 01/child_b
+ run jobs under child_a and child_b
+
+ create/delete following groups at random while jobs are running.
+ /opt/cgroup/01/child_a/child_aa
+ /opt/cgroup/01/child_b/child_bb
+ /opt/cgroup/01/child_c
+
+ running new jobs in new group is also good.
+
+ 9.6 Mount with other subsystems.
+ Mounting with other subsystems is a good test because there is a
+ race and lock dependency with other cgroup subsystems.
+
+ example)
+ # mount -t cgroup none /cgroup -o cpuset,memory,cpu,devices
+
+ and do task move, mkdir, rmdir etc...under this.
+
+ 9.7 swapoff.
+ Besides management of swap is one of complicated parts of memcg,
+ call path of swap-in at swapoff is not same as usual swap-in path..
+ It's worth to be tested explicitly.
+
+ For example, test like following is good.
+ (Shell-A)
+ # mount -t cgroup none /cgroup -o memory
+ # mkdir /cgroup/test
+ # echo 40M > /cgroup/test/memory.limit_in_bytes
+ # echo 0 > /cgroup/test/tasks
+ Run malloc(100M) program under this. You'll see 60M of swaps.
+ (Shell-B)
+ # move all tasks in /cgroup/test to /cgroup
+ # /sbin/swapoff -a
+ # rmdir /cgroup/test
+ # kill malloc task.
+
+ Of course, tmpfs v.s. swapoff test should be tested, too.
+
+ 9.8 OOM-Killer
+ Out-of-memory caused by memcg's limit will kill tasks under
+ the memcg. When hierarchy is used, a task under hierarchy
+ will be killed by the kernel.
+ In this case, panic_on_oom shouldn't be invoked and tasks
+ in other groups shouldn't be killed.
+
+ It's not difficult to cause OOM under memcg as following.
+ Case A) when you can swapoff
+ #swapoff -a
+ #echo 50M > /memory.limit_in_bytes
+ run 51M of malloc
+
+ Case B) when you use mem+swap limitation.
+ #echo 50M > memory.limit_in_bytes
+ #echo 50M > memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes
+ run 51M of malloc
+
+ 9.9 Move charges at task migration
+ Charges associated with a task can be moved along with task migration.
+
+ (Shell-A)
+ #mkdir /cgroup/A
+ #echo $$ >/cgroup/A/tasks
+ run some programs which uses some amount of memory in /cgroup/A.
+
+ (Shell-B)
+ #mkdir /cgroup/B
+ #echo 1 >/cgroup/B/memory.move_charge_at_immigrate
+ #echo "pid of the program running in group A" >/cgroup/B/tasks
+
+ You can see charges have been moved by reading *.usage_in_bytes or
+ memory.stat of both A and B.
+ See 8.2 of Documentation/cgroups/memory.txt to see what value should be
+ written to move_charge_at_immigrate.
+
+ 9.10 Memory thresholds
+ Memory controller implements memory thresholds using cgroups notification
+ API. You can use tools/cgroup/cgroup_event_listener.c to test it.
+
+ (Shell-A) Create cgroup and run event listener
+ # mkdir /cgroup/A
+ # ./cgroup_event_listener /cgroup/A/memory.usage_in_bytes 5M
+
+ (Shell-B) Add task to cgroup and try to allocate and free memory
+ # echo $$ >/cgroup/A/tasks
+ # a="$(dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=10)"
+ # a=
+
+ You will see message from cgroup_event_listener every time you cross
+ the thresholds.
+
+ Use /cgroup/A/memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes to test memsw thresholds.
+
+ It's good idea to test root cgroup as well.
diff --git a/Documentation/cgroups/memory.txt b/Documentation/cgroups/memory.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..f456b4315
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/cgroups/memory.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,875 @@
+Memory Resource Controller
+
+NOTE: This document is hopelessly outdated and it asks for a complete
+ rewrite. It still contains a useful information so we are keeping it
+ here but make sure to check the current code if you need a deeper
+ understanding.
+
+NOTE: The Memory Resource Controller has 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.
+
+(For editors)
+In this document:
+ When we mention a cgroup (cgroupfs's directory) with memory controller,
+ we call it "memory cgroup". When you see git-log and source code, you'll
+ see patch's title and function names tend to use "memcg".
+ In this document, we avoid using it.
+
+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 a 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).
+
+Current Status: linux-2.6.34-mmotm(development version of 2010/April)
+
+Features:
+ - accounting anonymous pages, file caches, swap caches usage and limiting them.
+ - pages are linked to per-memcg LRU exclusively, and there is no global LRU.
+ - optionally, memory+swap usage can be accounted and limited.
+ - hierarchical accounting
+ - soft limit
+ - moving (recharging) account at moving a task is selectable.
+ - usage threshold notifier
+ - memory pressure notifier
+ - oom-killer disable knob and oom-notifier
+ - Root cgroup has no limit controls.
+
+ Kernel memory support is a work in progress, and the current version provides
+ basically functionality. (See Section 2.7)
+
+Brief summary of control files.
+
+ tasks # attach a task(thread) and show list of threads
+ cgroup.procs # show list of processes
+ cgroup.event_control # an interface for event_fd()
+ memory.usage_in_bytes # show current usage for memory
+ (See 5.5 for details)
+ memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes # show current usage for memory+Swap
+ (See 5.5 for details)
+ memory.limit_in_bytes # set/show limit of memory usage
+ memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes # set/show limit of memory+Swap usage
+ memory.failcnt # show the number of memory usage hits limits
+ memory.memsw.failcnt # show the number of memory+Swap hits limits
+ memory.max_usage_in_bytes # show max memory usage recorded
+ memory.memsw.max_usage_in_bytes # show max memory+Swap usage recorded
+ memory.soft_limit_in_bytes # set/show soft limit of memory usage
+ memory.stat # show various statistics
+ memory.use_hierarchy # set/show hierarchical account enabled
+ memory.force_empty # trigger forced move charge to parent
+ memory.pressure_level # set memory pressure notifications
+ memory.swappiness # set/show swappiness parameter of vmscan
+ (See sysctl's vm.swappiness)
+ memory.move_charge_at_immigrate # set/show controls of moving charges
+ memory.oom_control # set/show oom controls.
+ memory.numa_stat # show the number of memory usage per numa node
+
+ memory.kmem.limit_in_bytes # set/show hard limit for kernel memory
+ memory.kmem.usage_in_bytes # show current kernel memory allocation
+ memory.kmem.failcnt # show the number of kernel memory usage hits limits
+ memory.kmem.max_usage_in_bytes # show max kernel memory usage recorded
+
+ memory.kmem.tcp.limit_in_bytes # set/show hard limit for tcp buf memory
+ memory.kmem.tcp.usage_in_bytes # show current tcp buf memory allocation
+ memory.kmem.tcp.failcnt # show the number of tcp buf memory usage hits limits
+ memory.kmem.tcp.max_usage_in_bytes # show max tcp buf memory usage recorded
+
+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 page_counter. The
+page_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 |
+ | (page_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_common() is invoked to
+set up 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
+updated. page_cgroup has its own LRU on cgroup.
+(*) page_cgroup structure is allocated at boot/memory-hotplug time.
+
+2.2.1 Accounting details
+
+All mapped anon pages (RSS) and cache pages (Page Cache) are accounted.
+Some pages which are never reclaimable and will not be on the LRU
+are not accounted. We just account 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.
+
+An RSS page is unaccounted when it's fully unmapped. A PageCache page is
+unaccounted when it's removed from radix-tree. Even if RSS pages are fully
+unmapped (by kswapd), they may exist as SwapCache in the system until they
+are really freed. Such SwapCaches are also accounted.
+A swapped-in page is not accounted until it's mapped.
+
+Note: The kernel does swapin-readahead and reads multiple swaps at once.
+This means swapped-in pages may contain pages for other tasks than a task
+causing page fault. So, we avoid accounting at swap-in I/O.
+
+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 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).
+
+But see section 8.2: when moving a task to another cgroup, its pages may
+be recharged to the new cgroup, if move_charge_at_immigrate has been chosen.
+
+Exception: If CONFIG_MEMCG_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_MEMCG_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.
+
+memsw means memory+swap. Usage of memory+swap is limited by
+memsw.limit_in_bytes.
+
+Example: Assume a system with 4G of swap. A task which allocates 6G of memory
+(by mistake) under 2G memory limitation will use all swap.
+In this case, setting memsw.limit_in_bytes=3G will prevent bad use of swap.
+By using the memsw limit, you can avoid system OOM which can be caused by swap
+shortage.
+
+* why 'memory+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
+memory+swap. In other words, when we want to limit the usage of swap without
+affecting global LRU, memory+swap limit is better than just limiting swap from
+an OS point of view.
+
+* What happens when a cgroup hits memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes
+When a cgroup hits memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes, it's useless to do swap-out
+in this cgroup. Then, swap-out will not be done by cgroup routine and file
+caches are dropped. But as mentioned above, global LRU can do swapout memory
+from it for sanity of the system's memory management state. You can't forbid
+it by cgroup.
+
+2.5 Reclaim
+
+Each cgroup maintains a per cgroup LRU which has the same structure as
+global VM. 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. (See 10. OOM Control below.)
+
+The reclaim algorithm has not been modified for cgroups, except that
+pages that are selected for reclaiming come from the per-cgroup LRU
+list.
+
+NOTE: Reclaim does not work for the root cgroup, since we cannot set any
+limits on the root cgroup.
+
+Note2: When panic_on_oom is set to "2", the whole system will panic.
+
+When oom event notifier is registered, event will be delivered.
+(See oom_control section)
+
+2.6 Locking
+
+ lock_page_cgroup()/unlock_page_cgroup() should not be called under
+ mapping->tree_lock.
+
+ Other lock order is following:
+ PG_locked.
+ mm->page_table_lock
+ zone->lru_lock
+ lock_page_cgroup.
+ In many cases, just lock_page_cgroup() is called.
+ per-zone-per-cgroup LRU (cgroup's private LRU) is just guarded by
+ zone->lru_lock, it has no lock of its own.
+
+2.7 Kernel Memory Extension (CONFIG_MEMCG_KMEM)
+
+With the Kernel memory extension, the Memory Controller is able to limit
+the amount of kernel memory used by the system. Kernel memory is fundamentally
+different than user memory, since it can't be swapped out, which makes it
+possible to DoS the system by consuming too much of this precious resource.
+
+Kernel memory won't be accounted at all until limit on a group is set. This
+allows for existing setups to continue working without disruption. The limit
+cannot be set if the cgroup have children, or if there are already tasks in the
+cgroup. Attempting to set the limit under those conditions will return -EBUSY.
+When use_hierarchy == 1 and a group is accounted, its children will
+automatically be accounted regardless of their limit value.
+
+After a group is first limited, it will be kept being accounted until it
+is removed. The memory limitation itself, can of course be removed by writing
+-1 to memory.kmem.limit_in_bytes. In this case, kmem will be accounted, but not
+limited.
+
+Kernel memory limits are not imposed for the root cgroup. Usage for the root
+cgroup may or may not be accounted. The memory used is accumulated into
+memory.kmem.usage_in_bytes, or in a separate counter when it makes sense.
+(currently only for tcp).
+The main "kmem" counter is fed into the main counter, so kmem charges will
+also be visible from the user counter.
+
+Currently no soft limit is implemented for kernel memory. It is future work
+to trigger slab reclaim when those limits are reached.
+
+2.7.1 Current Kernel Memory resources accounted
+
+* stack pages: every process consumes some stack pages. By accounting into
+kernel memory, we prevent new processes from being created when the kernel
+memory usage is too high.
+
+* slab pages: pages allocated by the SLAB or SLUB allocator are tracked. A copy
+of each kmem_cache is created every time the cache is touched by the first time
+from inside the memcg. The creation is done lazily, so some objects can still be
+skipped while the cache is being created. All objects in a slab page should
+belong to the same memcg. This only fails to hold when a task is migrated to a
+different memcg during the page allocation by the cache.
+
+* sockets memory pressure: some sockets protocols have memory pressure
+thresholds. The Memory Controller allows them to be controlled individually
+per cgroup, instead of globally.
+
+* tcp memory pressure: sockets memory pressure for the tcp protocol.
+
+2.7.2 Common use cases
+
+Because the "kmem" counter is fed to the main user counter, kernel memory can
+never be limited completely independently of user memory. Say "U" is the user
+limit, and "K" the kernel limit. There are three possible ways limits can be
+set:
+
+ U != 0, K = unlimited:
+ This is the standard memcg limitation mechanism already present before kmem
+ accounting. Kernel memory is completely ignored.
+
+ U != 0, K < U:
+ Kernel memory is a subset of the user memory. This setup is useful in
+ deployments where the total amount of memory per-cgroup is overcommited.
+ Overcommiting kernel memory limits is definitely not recommended, since the
+ box can still run out of non-reclaimable memory.
+ In this case, the admin could set up K so that the sum of all groups is
+ never greater than the total memory, and freely set U at the cost of his
+ QoS.
+ WARNING: In the current implementation, memory reclaim will NOT be
+ triggered for a cgroup when it hits K while staying below U, which makes
+ this setup impractical.
+
+ U != 0, K >= U:
+ Since kmem charges will also be fed to the user counter and reclaim will be
+ triggered for the cgroup for both kinds of memory. This setup gives the
+ admin a unified view of memory, and it is also useful for people who just
+ want to track kernel memory usage.
+
+3. User Interface
+
+3.0. Configuration
+
+a. Enable CONFIG_CGROUPS
+b. Enable CONFIG_MEMCG
+c. Enable CONFIG_MEMCG_SWAP (to use swap extension)
+d. Enable CONFIG_MEMCG_KMEM (to use kmem extension)
+
+3.1. Prepare the cgroups (see cgroups.txt, Why are cgroups needed?)
+# mount -t tmpfs none /sys/fs/cgroup
+# mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/memory
+# mount -t cgroup none /sys/fs/cgroup/memory -o memory
+
+3.2. Make the new group and move bash into it
+# mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0
+# echo $$ > /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0/tasks
+
+Since now we're in the 0 cgroup, we can alter the memory limit:
+# echo 4M > /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/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. (Here, Kilo, Mega, Giga are Kibibytes, Mebibytes, Gibibytes.)
+
+NOTE: We can write "-1" to reset the *.limit_in_bytes(unlimited).
+NOTE: We cannot set limits on the root cgroup any more.
+
+# cat /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0/memory.limit_in_bytes
+4194304
+
+We can check the usage:
+# cat /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/0/memory.usage_in_bytes
+1216512
+
+A successful write to this file does not guarantee a successful setting 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
+
+For testing features and implementation, see memcg_test.txt.
+
+Performance test is also important. To see pure memory controller's overhead,
+testing on tmpfs will give you good numbers of small overheads.
+Example: do kernel make on tmpfs.
+
+Page-fault scalability is also important. At measuring parallel
+page fault test, multi-process test may be better than multi-thread
+test because it has noise of shared objects/status.
+
+But the above two are testing extreme situations.
+Trying usual test under memory controller is always helpful.
+
+4.1 Troubleshooting
+
+Sometimes a user might find that the application under a cgroup is
+terminated by the OOM killer. 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).
+
+To know what happens, disabling OOM_Kill as per "10. OOM Control" (below) and
+seeing what happens will be helpful.
+
+4.2 Task migration
+
+When a task migrates from one cgroup to another, its charge is not
+carried forward by default. The pages allocated from the original cgroup still
+remain charged to it, the charge is dropped when the page is freed or
+reclaimed.
+
+You can move charges of a task along with task migration.
+See 8. "Move charges at task migration"
+
+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. (because we charge against pages, not
+against tasks.)
+
+We move the stats to root (if use_hierarchy==0) or parent (if
+use_hierarchy==1), and no change on the charge except uncharging
+from the child.
+
+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.
+
+About use_hierarchy, see Section 6.
+
+5. Misc. interfaces.
+
+5.1 force_empty
+ memory.force_empty interface is provided to make cgroup's memory usage empty.
+ When writing anything to this
+
+ # echo 0 > memory.force_empty
+
+ the cgroup will be reclaimed and as many pages reclaimed as possible.
+
+ The typical use case for this interface is before calling 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.
+
+ Also, note that when memory.kmem.limit_in_bytes is set the charges due to
+ kernel pages will still be seen. This is not considered a failure and the
+ write will still return success. In this case, it is expected that
+ memory.kmem.usage_in_bytes == memory.usage_in_bytes.
+
+ About use_hierarchy, see Section 6.
+
+5.2 stat file
+
+memory.stat file includes following statistics
+
+# per-memory cgroup local status
+cache - # of bytes of page cache memory.
+rss - # of bytes of anonymous and swap cache memory (includes
+ transparent hugepages).
+rss_huge - # of bytes of anonymous transparent hugepages.
+mapped_file - # of bytes of mapped file (includes tmpfs/shmem)
+pgpgin - # of charging events to the memory cgroup. The charging
+ event happens each time a page is accounted as either mapped
+ anon page(RSS) or cache page(Page Cache) to the cgroup.
+pgpgout - # of uncharging events to the memory cgroup. The uncharging
+ event happens each time a page is unaccounted from the cgroup.
+swap - # of bytes of swap usage
+writeback - # of bytes of file/anon cache that are queued for syncing to
+ disk.
+inactive_anon - # of bytes of anonymous and swap cache memory on inactive
+ LRU list.
+active_anon - # of bytes of anonymous and swap cache memory on active
+ LRU list.
+inactive_file - # of bytes of file-backed memory on inactive LRU list.
+active_file - # of bytes of file-backed memory on active LRU list.
+unevictable - # of bytes of memory that cannot be reclaimed (mlocked etc).
+
+# status considering hierarchy (see memory.use_hierarchy settings)
+
+hierarchical_memory_limit - # of bytes of memory limit with regard to hierarchy
+ under which the memory cgroup is
+hierarchical_memsw_limit - # of bytes of memory+swap limit with regard to
+ hierarchy under which memory cgroup is.
+
+total_<counter> - # hierarchical version of <counter>, which in
+ addition to the cgroup's own value includes the
+ sum of all hierarchical children's values of
+ <counter>, i.e. total_cache
+
+# The following additional stats are dependent on CONFIG_DEBUG_VM.
+
+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.
+
+Note:
+ Only anonymous and swap cache memory is listed as part of 'rss' stat.
+ This should not be confused with the true 'resident set size' or the
+ amount of physical memory used by the cgroup.
+ 'rss + file_mapped" will give you resident set size of cgroup.
+ (Note: file and shmem may be shared among other cgroups. In that case,
+ file_mapped is accounted only when the memory cgroup is owner of page
+ cache.)
+
+5.3 swappiness
+
+Overrides /proc/sys/vm/swappiness for the particular group. The tunable
+in the root cgroup corresponds to the global swappiness setting.
+
+Please note that unlike during the global reclaim, limit reclaim
+enforces that 0 swappiness really prevents from any swapping even if
+there is a swap storage available. This might lead to memcg OOM killer
+if there are no file pages to reclaim.
+
+5.4 failcnt
+
+A memory cgroup provides memory.failcnt and memory.memsw.failcnt files.
+This failcnt(== failure count) shows the number of times that a usage counter
+hit its limit. When a memory cgroup hits a limit, failcnt increases and
+memory under it will be reclaimed.
+
+You can reset failcnt by writing 0 to failcnt file.
+# echo 0 > .../memory.failcnt
+
+5.5 usage_in_bytes
+
+For efficiency, as other kernel components, memory cgroup uses some optimization
+to avoid unnecessary cacheline false sharing. usage_in_bytes is affected by the
+method and doesn't show 'exact' value of memory (and swap) usage, it's a fuzz
+value for efficient access. (Of course, when necessary, it's synchronized.)
+If you want to know more exact memory usage, you should use RSS+CACHE(+SWAP)
+value in memory.stat(see 5.2).
+
+5.6 numa_stat
+
+This is similar to numa_maps but operates on a per-memcg basis. This is
+useful for providing visibility into the numa locality information within
+an memcg since the pages are allowed to be allocated from any physical
+node. One of the use cases is evaluating application performance by
+combining this information with the application's CPU allocation.
+
+Each memcg's numa_stat file includes "total", "file", "anon" and "unevictable"
+per-node page counts including "hierarchical_<counter>" which sums up all
+hierarchical children's values in addition to the memcg's own value.
+
+The output format of memory.numa_stat is:
+
+total=<total pages> N0=<node 0 pages> N1=<node 1 pages> ...
+file=<total file pages> N0=<node 0 pages> N1=<node 1 pages> ...
+anon=<total anon pages> N0=<node 0 pages> N1=<node 1 pages> ...
+unevictable=<total anon pages> N0=<node 0 pages> N1=<node 1 pages> ...
+hierarchical_<counter>=<counter pages> N0=<node 0 pages> N1=<node 1 pages> ...
+
+The "total" count is sum of file + anon + unevictable.
+
+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
+
+A memory cgroup 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 either the cgroup already has other
+ cgroups created below it, or if the parent cgroup has use_hierarchy
+ enabled.
+
+NOTE2: When panic_on_oom is set to "2", the whole system will panic in
+ case of an OOM event in any cgroup.
+
+7. Soft limits
+
+Soft limits allow for greater sharing of memory. The idea behind soft limits
+is to allow control groups to use as much of the memory as needed, provided
+
+a. There is no memory contention
+b. They do not exceed their hard limit
+
+When the system detects memory contention or low memory, control groups
+are pushed back to their soft limits. If the soft limit of each control
+group is very high, they are pushed back as much as possible to make
+sure that one control group does not starve the others of memory.
+
+Please note that soft limits is a best-effort feature; it comes with
+no guarantees, but it does its best to make sure that when memory is
+heavily contended for, memory is allocated based on the soft limit
+hints/setup. Currently soft limit based reclaim is set up such that
+it gets invoked from balance_pgdat (kswapd).
+
+7.1 Interface
+
+Soft limits can be setup by using the following commands (in this example we
+assume a soft limit of 256 MiB)
+
+# echo 256M > memory.soft_limit_in_bytes
+
+If we want to change this to 1G, we can at any time use
+
+# echo 1G > memory.soft_limit_in_bytes
+
+NOTE1: Soft limits take effect over a long period of time, since they involve
+ reclaiming memory for balancing between memory cgroups
+NOTE2: It is recommended to set the soft limit always below the hard limit,
+ otherwise the hard limit will take precedence.
+
+8. Move charges at task migration
+
+Users can move charges associated with a task along with task migration, that
+is, uncharge task's pages from the old cgroup and charge them to the new cgroup.
+This feature is not supported in !CONFIG_MMU environments because of lack of
+page tables.
+
+8.1 Interface
+
+This feature is disabled by default. It can be enabled (and disabled again) by
+writing to memory.move_charge_at_immigrate of the destination cgroup.
+
+If you want to enable it:
+
+# echo (some positive value) > memory.move_charge_at_immigrate
+
+Note: Each bits of move_charge_at_immigrate has its own meaning about what type
+ of charges should be moved. See 8.2 for details.
+Note: Charges are moved only when you move mm->owner, in other words,
+ a leader of a thread group.
+Note: If we cannot find enough space for the task in the destination cgroup, we
+ try to make space by reclaiming memory. Task migration may fail if we
+ cannot make enough space.
+Note: It can take several seconds if you move charges much.
+
+And if you want disable it again:
+
+# echo 0 > memory.move_charge_at_immigrate
+
+8.2 Type of charges which can be moved
+
+Each bit in move_charge_at_immigrate has its own meaning about what type of
+charges should be moved. But in any case, it must be noted that an account of
+a page or a swap can be moved only when it is charged to the task's current
+(old) memory cgroup.
+
+ bit | what type of charges would be moved ?
+ -----+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+ 0 | A charge of an anonymous page (or swap of it) used by the target task.
+ | You must enable Swap Extension (see 2.4) to enable move of swap charges.
+ -----+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+ 1 | A charge of file pages (normal file, tmpfs file (e.g. ipc shared memory)
+ | and swaps of tmpfs file) mmapped by the target task. Unlike the case of
+ | anonymous pages, file pages (and swaps) in the range mmapped by the task
+ | will be moved even if the task hasn't done page fault, i.e. they might
+ | not be the task's "RSS", but other task's "RSS" that maps the same file.
+ | And mapcount of the page is ignored (the page can be moved even if
+ | page_mapcount(page) > 1). You must enable Swap Extension (see 2.4) to
+ | enable move of swap charges.
+
+8.3 TODO
+
+- All of moving charge operations are done under cgroup_mutex. It's not good
+ behavior to hold the mutex too long, so we may need some trick.
+
+9. Memory thresholds
+
+Memory cgroup implements memory thresholds using the cgroups notification
+API (see cgroups.txt). It allows to register multiple memory and memsw
+thresholds and gets notifications when it crosses.
+
+To register a threshold, an application must:
+- create an eventfd using eventfd(2);
+- open memory.usage_in_bytes or memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes;
+- write string like "<event_fd> <fd of memory.usage_in_bytes> <threshold>" to
+ cgroup.event_control.
+
+Application will be notified through eventfd when memory usage crosses
+threshold in any direction.
+
+It's applicable for root and non-root cgroup.
+
+10. OOM Control
+
+memory.oom_control file is for OOM notification and other controls.
+
+Memory cgroup implements OOM notifier using the cgroup notification
+API (See cgroups.txt). It allows to register multiple OOM notification
+delivery and gets notification when OOM happens.
+
+To register a notifier, an application must:
+ - create an eventfd using eventfd(2)
+ - open memory.oom_control file
+ - write string like "<event_fd> <fd of memory.oom_control>" to
+ cgroup.event_control
+
+The application will be notified through eventfd when OOM happens.
+OOM notification doesn't work for the root cgroup.
+
+You can disable the OOM-killer by writing "1" to memory.oom_control file, as:
+
+ #echo 1 > memory.oom_control
+
+If OOM-killer is disabled, tasks under cgroup will hang/sleep
+in memory cgroup's OOM-waitqueue when they request accountable memory.
+
+For running them, you have to relax the memory cgroup's OOM status by
+ * enlarge limit or reduce usage.
+To reduce usage,
+ * kill some tasks.
+ * move some tasks to other group with account migration.
+ * remove some files (on tmpfs?)
+
+Then, stopped tasks will work again.
+
+At reading, current status of OOM is shown.
+ oom_kill_disable 0 or 1 (if 1, oom-killer is disabled)
+ under_oom 0 or 1 (if 1, the memory cgroup is under OOM, tasks may
+ be stopped.)
+
+11. Memory Pressure
+
+The pressure level notifications can be used to monitor the memory
+allocation cost; based on the pressure, applications can implement
+different strategies of managing their memory resources. The pressure
+levels are defined as following:
+
+The "low" level means that the system is reclaiming memory for new
+allocations. Monitoring this reclaiming activity might be useful for
+maintaining cache level. Upon notification, the program (typically
+"Activity Manager") might analyze vmstat and act in advance (i.e.
+prematurely shutdown unimportant services).
+
+The "medium" level means that the system is experiencing medium memory
+pressure, the system might be making swap, paging out active file caches,
+etc. Upon this event applications may decide to further analyze
+vmstat/zoneinfo/memcg or internal memory usage statistics and free any
+resources that can be easily reconstructed or re-read from a disk.
+
+The "critical" level means that the system is actively thrashing, it is
+about to out of memory (OOM) or even the in-kernel OOM killer is on its
+way to trigger. Applications should do whatever they can to help the
+system. It might be too late to consult with vmstat or any other
+statistics, so it's advisable to take an immediate action.
+
+The events are propagated upward until the event is handled, i.e. the
+events are not pass-through. Here is what this means: for example you have
+three cgroups: A->B->C. Now you set up an event listener on cgroups A, B
+and C, and suppose group C experiences some pressure. In this situation,
+only group C will receive the notification, i.e. groups A and B will not
+receive it. This is done to avoid excessive "broadcasting" of messages,
+which disturbs the system and which is especially bad if we are low on
+memory or thrashing. So, organize the cgroups wisely, or propagate the
+events manually (or, ask us to implement the pass-through events,
+explaining why would you need them.)
+
+The file memory.pressure_level is only used to setup an eventfd. To
+register a notification, an application must:
+
+- create an eventfd using eventfd(2);
+- open memory.pressure_level;
+- write string like "<event_fd> <fd of memory.pressure_level> <level>"
+ to cgroup.event_control.
+
+Application will be notified through eventfd when memory pressure is at
+the specific level (or higher). Read/write operations to
+memory.pressure_level are no implemented.
+
+Test:
+
+ Here is a small script example that makes a new cgroup, sets up a
+ memory limit, sets up a notification in the cgroup and then makes child
+ cgroup experience a critical pressure:
+
+ # cd /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/
+ # mkdir foo
+ # cd foo
+ # cgroup_event_listener memory.pressure_level low &
+ # echo 8000000 > memory.limit_in_bytes
+ # echo 8000000 > memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes
+ # echo $$ > tasks
+ # dd if=/dev/zero | read x
+
+ (Expect a bunch of notifications, and eventually, the oom-killer will
+ trigger.)
+
+12. TODO
+
+1. Make per-cgroup scanner reclaim not-shared pages first
+2. Teach controller to account for shared-pages
+3. 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/
diff --git a/Documentation/cgroups/net_cls.txt b/Documentation/cgroups/net_cls.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..ec182346d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/cgroups/net_cls.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
+Network classifier cgroup
+-------------------------
+
+The Network classifier cgroup provides an interface to
+tag network packets with a class identifier (classid).
+
+The Traffic Controller (tc) can be used to assign
+different priorities to packets from different cgroups.
+Also, Netfilter (iptables) can use this tag to perform
+actions on such packets.
+
+Creating a net_cls cgroups instance creates a net_cls.classid file.
+This net_cls.classid value is initialized to 0.
+
+You can write hexadecimal values to net_cls.classid; the format for these
+values is 0xAAAABBBB; AAAA is the major handle number and BBBB
+is the minor handle number.
+Reading net_cls.classid yields a decimal result.
+
+Example:
+mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/net_cls
+mount -t cgroup -onet_cls net_cls /sys/fs/cgroup/net_cls
+mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/net_cls/0
+echo 0x100001 > /sys/fs/cgroup/net_cls/0/net_cls.classid
+ - setting a 10:1 handle.
+
+cat /sys/fs/cgroup/net_cls/0/net_cls.classid
+1048577
+
+configuring tc:
+tc qdisc add dev eth0 root handle 10: htb
+
+tc class add dev eth0 parent 10: classid 10:1 htb rate 40mbit
+ - creating traffic class 10:1
+
+tc filter add dev eth0 parent 10: protocol ip prio 10 handle 1: cgroup
+
+configuring iptables, basic example:
+iptables -A OUTPUT -m cgroup ! --cgroup 0x100001 -j DROP
diff --git a/Documentation/cgroups/net_prio.txt b/Documentation/cgroups/net_prio.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..a82cbd28e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/cgroups/net_prio.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
+Network priority cgroup
+-------------------------
+
+The Network priority cgroup provides an interface to allow an administrator to
+dynamically set the priority of network traffic generated by various
+applications
+
+Nominally, an application would set the priority of its traffic via the
+SO_PRIORITY socket option. This however, is not always possible because:
+
+1) The application may not have been coded to set this value
+2) The priority of application traffic is often a site-specific administrative
+ decision rather than an application defined one.
+
+This cgroup allows an administrator to assign a process to a group which defines
+the priority of egress traffic on a given interface. Network priority groups can
+be created by first mounting the cgroup filesystem.
+
+# mount -t cgroup -onet_prio none /sys/fs/cgroup/net_prio
+
+With the above step, the initial group acting as the parent accounting group
+becomes visible at '/sys/fs/cgroup/net_prio'. This group includes all tasks in
+the system. '/sys/fs/cgroup/net_prio/tasks' lists the tasks in this cgroup.
+
+Each net_prio cgroup contains two files that are subsystem specific
+
+net_prio.prioidx
+This file is read-only, and is simply informative. It contains a unique integer
+value that the kernel uses as an internal representation of this cgroup.
+
+net_prio.ifpriomap
+This file contains a map of the priorities assigned to traffic originating from
+processes in this group and egressing the system on various interfaces. It
+contains a list of tuples in the form <ifname priority>. Contents of this file
+can be modified by echoing a string into the file using the same tuple format.
+for example:
+
+echo "eth0 5" > /sys/fs/cgroups/net_prio/iscsi/net_prio.ifpriomap
+
+This command would force any traffic originating from processes belonging to the
+iscsi net_prio cgroup and egressing on interface eth0 to have the priority of
+said traffic set to the value 5. The parent accounting group also has a
+writeable 'net_prio.ifpriomap' file that can be used to set a system default
+priority.
+
+Priorities are set immediately prior to queueing a frame to the device
+queueing discipline (qdisc) so priorities will be assigned prior to the hardware
+queue selection being made.
+
+One usage for the net_prio cgroup is with mqprio qdisc allowing application
+traffic to be steered to hardware/driver based traffic classes. These mappings
+can then be managed by administrators or other networking protocols such as
+DCBX.
+
+A new net_prio cgroup inherits the parent's configuration.
diff --git a/Documentation/cgroups/unified-hierarchy.txt b/Documentation/cgroups/unified-hierarchy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..eb102fb72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/cgroups/unified-hierarchy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,461 @@
+
+Cgroup unified hierarchy
+
+April, 2014 Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
+
+This document describes the changes made by unified hierarchy and
+their rationales. It will eventually be merged into the main cgroup
+documentation.
+
+CONTENTS
+
+1. Background
+2. Basic Operation
+ 2-1. Mounting
+ 2-2. cgroup.subtree_control
+ 2-3. cgroup.controllers
+3. Structural Constraints
+ 3-1. Top-down
+ 3-2. No internal tasks
+4. Other Changes
+ 4-1. [Un]populated Notification
+ 4-2. Other Core Changes
+ 4-3. Per-Controller Changes
+ 4-3-1. blkio
+ 4-3-2. cpuset
+ 4-3-3. memory
+5. Planned Changes
+ 5-1. CAP for resource control
+
+
+1. Background
+
+cgroup allows an arbitrary number of hierarchies and each hierarchy
+can host any number of controllers. While this seems to provide a
+high level of flexibility, it isn't quite useful in practice.
+
+For example, as there is only one instance of each controller, utility
+type controllers such as freezer which can be useful in all
+hierarchies can only be used in one. The issue is exacerbated by the
+fact that controllers can't be moved around once hierarchies are
+populated. Another issue is that all controllers bound to a hierarchy
+are forced to have exactly the same view of the hierarchy. It isn't
+possible to vary the granularity depending on the specific controller.
+
+In practice, these issues heavily limit which controllers can be put
+on the same hierarchy and most configurations resort to putting each
+controller on its own hierarchy. Only closely related ones, such as
+the cpu and cpuacct controllers, make sense to put on the same
+hierarchy. This often means that userland ends up managing multiple
+similar hierarchies repeating the same steps on each hierarchy
+whenever a hierarchy management operation is necessary.
+
+Unfortunately, support for multiple hierarchies comes at a steep cost.
+Internal implementation in cgroup core proper is dazzlingly
+complicated but more importantly the support for multiple hierarchies
+restricts how cgroup is used in general and what controllers can do.
+
+There's no limit on how many hierarchies there may be, which means
+that a task's cgroup membership can't be described in finite length.
+The key may contain any varying number of entries and is unlimited in
+length, which makes it highly awkward to handle and leads to addition
+of controllers which exist only to identify membership, which in turn
+exacerbates the original problem.
+
+Also, as a controller can't have any expectation regarding what shape
+of hierarchies other controllers would be on, each controller has to
+assume that all other controllers are operating on completely
+orthogonal hierarchies. This makes it impossible, or at least very
+cumbersome, for controllers to cooperate with each other.
+
+In most use cases, putting controllers on hierarchies which are
+completely orthogonal to each other isn't necessary. What usually is
+called for is the ability to have differing levels of granularity
+depending on the specific controller. In other words, hierarchy may
+be collapsed from leaf towards root when viewed from specific
+controllers. For example, a given configuration might not care about
+how memory is distributed beyond a certain level while still wanting
+to control how CPU cycles are distributed.
+
+Unified hierarchy is the next version of cgroup interface. It aims to
+address the aforementioned issues by having more structure while
+retaining enough flexibility for most use cases. Various other
+general and controller-specific interface issues are also addressed in
+the process.
+
+
+2. Basic Operation
+
+2-1. Mounting
+
+Currently, unified hierarchy can be mounted with the following mount
+command. Note that this is still under development and scheduled to
+change soon.
+
+ mount -t cgroup -o __DEVEL__sane_behavior cgroup $MOUNT_POINT
+
+All controllers which support the unified hierarchy and are not bound
+to other hierarchies are automatically bound to unified hierarchy and
+show up at the root of it. Controllers which are enabled only in the
+root of unified hierarchy can be bound to other hierarchies. This
+allows mixing unified hierarchy with the traditional multiple
+hierarchies in a fully backward compatible way.
+
+For development purposes, the following boot parameter makes all
+controllers to appear on the unified hierarchy whether supported or
+not.
+
+ cgroup__DEVEL__legacy_files_on_dfl
+
+A controller can be moved across hierarchies only after the controller
+is no longer referenced in its current hierarchy. Because per-cgroup
+controller states are destroyed asynchronously and controllers may
+have lingering references, a controller may not show up immediately on
+the unified hierarchy after the final umount of the previous
+hierarchy. Similarly, a controller should be fully disabled to be
+moved out of the unified hierarchy and it may take some time for the
+disabled controller to become available for other hierarchies;
+furthermore, due to dependencies among controllers, other controllers
+may need to be disabled too.
+
+While useful for development and manual configurations, dynamically
+moving controllers between the unified and other hierarchies is
+strongly discouraged for production use. It is recommended to decide
+the hierarchies and controller associations before starting using the
+controllers.
+
+
+2-2. cgroup.subtree_control
+
+All cgroups on unified hierarchy have a "cgroup.subtree_control" file
+which governs which controllers are enabled on the children of the
+cgroup. Let's assume a hierarchy like the following.
+
+ root - A - B - C
+ \ D
+
+root's "cgroup.subtree_control" file determines which controllers are
+enabled on A. A's on B. B's on C and D. This coincides with the
+fact that controllers on the immediate sub-level are used to
+distribute the resources of the parent. In fact, it's natural to
+assume that resource control knobs of a child belong to its parent.
+Enabling a controller in a "cgroup.subtree_control" file declares that
+distribution of the respective resources of the cgroup will be
+controlled. Note that this means that controller enable states are
+shared among siblings.
+
+When read, the file contains a space-separated list of currently
+enabled controllers. A write to the file should contain a
+space-separated list of controllers with '+' or '-' prefixed (without
+the quotes). Controllers prefixed with '+' are enabled and '-'
+disabled. If a controller is listed multiple times, the last entry
+wins. The specific operations are executed atomically - either all
+succeed or fail.
+
+
+2-3. cgroup.controllers
+
+Read-only "cgroup.controllers" file contains a space-separated list of
+controllers which can be enabled in the cgroup's
+"cgroup.subtree_control" file.
+
+In the root cgroup, this lists controllers which are not bound to
+other hierarchies and the content changes as controllers are bound to
+and unbound from other hierarchies.
+
+In non-root cgroups, the content of this file equals that of the
+parent's "cgroup.subtree_control" file as only controllers enabled
+from the parent can be used in its children.
+
+
+3. Structural Constraints
+
+3-1. Top-down
+
+As it doesn't make sense to nest control of an uncontrolled resource,
+all non-root "cgroup.subtree_control" files can only contain
+controllers which are enabled in the parent's "cgroup.subtree_control"
+file. A controller can be enabled only if the parent has the
+controller enabled and a controller can't be disabled if one or more
+children have it enabled.
+
+
+3-2. No internal tasks
+
+One long-standing issue that cgroup faces is the competition between
+tasks belonging to the parent cgroup and its children cgroups. This
+is inherently nasty as two different types of entities compete and
+there is no agreed-upon obvious way to handle it. Different
+controllers are doing different things.
+
+The cpu controller considers tasks and cgroups as equivalents and maps
+nice levels to cgroup weights. This works for some cases but falls
+flat when children should be allocated specific ratios of CPU cycles
+and the number of internal tasks fluctuates - the ratios constantly
+change as the number of competing entities fluctuates. There also are
+other issues. The mapping from nice level to weight isn't obvious or
+universal, and there are various other knobs which simply aren't
+available for tasks.
+
+The blkio controller implicitly creates a hidden leaf node for each
+cgroup to host the tasks. The hidden leaf has its own copies of all
+the knobs with "leaf_" prefixed. While this allows equivalent control
+over internal tasks, it's with serious drawbacks. It always adds an
+extra layer of nesting which may not be necessary, makes the interface
+messy and significantly complicates the implementation.
+
+The memory controller currently doesn't have a way to control what
+happens between internal tasks and child cgroups and the behavior is
+not clearly defined. There have been attempts to add ad-hoc behaviors
+and knobs to tailor the behavior to specific workloads. Continuing
+this direction will lead to problems which will be extremely difficult
+to resolve in the long term.
+
+Multiple controllers struggle with internal tasks and came up with
+different ways to deal with it; unfortunately, all the approaches in
+use now are severely flawed and, furthermore, the widely different
+behaviors make cgroup as whole highly inconsistent.
+
+It is clear that this is something which needs to be addressed from
+cgroup core proper in a uniform way so that controllers don't need to
+worry about it and cgroup as a whole shows a consistent and logical
+behavior. To achieve that, unified hierarchy enforces the following
+structural constraint:
+
+ Except for the root, only cgroups which don't contain any task may
+ have controllers enabled in their "cgroup.subtree_control" files.
+
+Combined with other properties, this guarantees that, when a
+controller is looking at the part of the hierarchy which has it
+enabled, tasks are always only on the leaves. This rules out
+situations where child cgroups compete against internal tasks of the
+parent.
+
+There are two things to note. Firstly, the root cgroup is exempt from
+the restriction. Root contains tasks and anonymous resource
+consumption which can't be associated with any other cgroup and
+requires special treatment from most controllers. How resource
+consumption in the root cgroup is governed is up to each controller.
+
+Secondly, the restriction doesn't take effect if there is no enabled
+controller in the cgroup's "cgroup.subtree_control" file. This is
+important as otherwise it wouldn't be possible to create children of a
+populated cgroup. To control resource distribution of a cgroup, the
+cgroup must create children and transfer all its tasks to the children
+before enabling controllers in its "cgroup.subtree_control" file.
+
+
+4. Other Changes
+
+4-1. [Un]populated Notification
+
+cgroup users often need a way to determine when a cgroup's
+subhierarchy becomes empty so that it can be cleaned up. cgroup
+currently provides release_agent for it; unfortunately, this mechanism
+is riddled with issues.
+
+- It delivers events by forking and execing a userland binary
+ specified as the release_agent. This is a long deprecated method of
+ notification delivery. It's extremely heavy, slow and cumbersome to
+ integrate with larger infrastructure.
+
+- There is single monitoring point at the root. There's no way to
+ delegate management of a subtree.
+
+- The event isn't recursive. It triggers when a cgroup doesn't have
+ any tasks or child cgroups. Events for internal nodes trigger only
+ after all children are removed. This again makes it impossible to
+ delegate management of a subtree.
+
+- Events are filtered from the kernel side. A "notify_on_release"
+ file is used to subscribe to or suppress release events. This is
+ unnecessarily complicated and probably done this way because event
+ delivery itself was expensive.
+
+Unified hierarchy implements an interface file "cgroup.populated"
+which can be used to monitor whether the cgroup's subhierarchy has
+tasks in it or not. Its value is 0 if there is no task in the cgroup
+and its descendants; otherwise, 1. poll and [id]notify events are
+triggered when the value changes.
+
+This is significantly lighter and simpler and trivially allows
+delegating management of subhierarchy - subhierarchy monitoring can
+block further propagation simply by putting itself or another process
+in the subhierarchy and monitor events that it's interested in from
+there without interfering with monitoring higher in the tree.
+
+In unified hierarchy, the release_agent mechanism is no longer
+supported and the interface files "release_agent" and
+"notify_on_release" do not exist.
+
+
+4-2. Other Core Changes
+
+- None of the mount options is allowed.
+
+- remount is disallowed.
+
+- rename(2) is disallowed.
+
+- The "tasks" file is removed. Everything should at process
+ granularity. Use the "cgroup.procs" file instead.
+
+- The "cgroup.procs" file is not sorted. pids will be unique unless
+ they got recycled in-between reads.
+
+- The "cgroup.clone_children" file is removed.
+
+
+4-3. Per-Controller Changes
+
+4-3-1. blkio
+
+- blk-throttle becomes properly hierarchical.
+
+
+4-3-2. cpuset
+
+- Tasks are kept in empty cpusets after hotplug and take on the masks
+ of the nearest non-empty ancestor, instead of being moved to it.
+
+- A task can be moved into an empty cpuset, and again it takes on the
+ masks of the nearest non-empty ancestor.
+
+
+4-3-3. memory
+
+- use_hierarchy is on by default and the cgroup file for the flag is
+ not created.
+
+- The original lower boundary, the soft limit, is defined as a limit
+ that is per default unset. As a result, the set of cgroups that
+ global reclaim prefers is opt-in, rather than opt-out. The costs
+ for optimizing these mostly negative lookups are so high that the
+ implementation, despite its enormous size, does not even provide the
+ basic desirable behavior. First off, the soft limit has no
+ hierarchical meaning. All configured groups are organized in a
+ global rbtree and treated like equal peers, regardless where they
+ are located in the hierarchy. This makes subtree delegation
+ impossible. Second, the soft limit reclaim pass is so aggressive
+ that it not just introduces high allocation latencies into the
+ system, but also impacts system performance due to overreclaim, to
+ the point where the feature becomes self-defeating.
+
+ The memory.low boundary on the other hand is a top-down allocated
+ reserve. A cgroup enjoys reclaim protection when it and all its
+ ancestors are below their low boundaries, which makes delegation of
+ subtrees possible. Secondly, new cgroups have no reserve per
+ default and in the common case most cgroups are eligible for the
+ preferred reclaim pass. This allows the new low boundary to be
+ efficiently implemented with just a minor addition to the generic
+ reclaim code, without the need for out-of-band data structures and
+ reclaim passes. Because the generic reclaim code considers all
+ cgroups except for the ones running low in the preferred first
+ reclaim pass, overreclaim of individual groups is eliminated as
+ well, resulting in much better overall workload performance.
+
+- The original high boundary, the hard limit, is defined as a strict
+ limit that can not budge, even if the OOM killer has to be called.
+ But this generally goes against the goal of making the most out of
+ the available memory. The memory consumption of workloads varies
+ during runtime, and that requires users to overcommit. But doing
+ that with a strict upper limit requires either a fairly accurate
+ prediction of the working set size or adding slack to the limit.
+ Since working set size estimation is hard and error prone, and
+ getting it wrong results in OOM kills, most users tend to err on the
+ side of a looser limit and end up wasting precious resources.
+
+ The memory.high boundary on the other hand can be set much more
+ conservatively. When hit, it throttles allocations by forcing them
+ into direct reclaim to work off the excess, but it never invokes the
+ OOM killer. As a result, a high boundary that is chosen too
+ aggressively will not terminate the processes, but instead it will
+ lead to gradual performance degradation. The user can monitor this
+ and make corrections until the minimal memory footprint that still
+ gives acceptable performance is found.
+
+ In extreme cases, with many concurrent allocations and a complete
+ breakdown of reclaim progress within the group, the high boundary
+ can be exceeded. But even then it's mostly better to satisfy the
+ allocation from the slack available in other groups or the rest of
+ the system than killing the group. Otherwise, memory.max is there
+ to limit this type of spillover and ultimately contain buggy or even
+ malicious applications.
+
+- The original control file names are unwieldy and inconsistent in
+ many different ways. For example, the upper boundary hit count is
+ exported in the memory.failcnt file, but an OOM event count has to
+ be manually counted by listening to memory.oom_control events, and
+ lower boundary / soft limit events have to be counted by first
+ setting a threshold for that value and then counting those events.
+ Also, usage and limit files encode their units in the filename.
+ That makes the filenames very long, even though this is not
+ information that a user needs to be reminded of every time they type
+ out those names.
+
+ To address these naming issues, as well as to signal clearly that
+ the new interface carries a new configuration model, the naming
+ conventions in it necessarily differ from the old interface.
+
+- The original limit files indicate the state of an unset limit with a
+ Very High Number, and a configured limit can be unset by echoing -1
+ into those files. But that very high number is implementation and
+ architecture dependent and not very descriptive. And while -1 can
+ be understood as an underflow into the highest possible value, -2 or
+ -10M etc. do not work, so it's not consistent.
+
+ memory.low, memory.high, and memory.max will use the string "max" to
+ indicate and set the highest possible value.
+
+5. Planned Changes
+
+5-1. CAP for resource control
+
+Unified hierarchy will require one of the capabilities(7), which is
+yet to be decided, for all resource control related knobs. Process
+organization operations - creation of sub-cgroups and migration of
+processes in sub-hierarchies may be delegated by changing the
+ownership and/or permissions on the cgroup directory and
+"cgroup.procs" interface file; however, all operations which affect
+resource control - writes to a "cgroup.subtree_control" file or any
+controller-specific knobs - will require an explicit CAP privilege.
+
+This, in part, is to prevent the cgroup interface from being
+inadvertently promoted to programmable API used by non-privileged
+binaries. cgroup exposes various aspects of the system in ways which
+aren't properly abstracted for direct consumption by regular programs.
+This is an administration interface much closer to sysctl knobs than
+system calls. Even the basic access model, being filesystem path
+based, isn't suitable for direct consumption. There's no way to
+access "my cgroup" in a race-free way or make multiple operations
+atomic against migration to another cgroup.
+
+Another aspect is that, for better or for worse, the cgroup interface
+goes through far less scrutiny than regular interfaces for
+unprivileged userland. The upside is that cgroup is able to expose
+useful features which may not be suitable for general consumption in a
+reasonable time frame. It provides a relatively short path between
+internal details and userland-visible interface. Of course, this
+shortcut comes with high risk. We go through what we go through for
+general kernel APIs for good reasons. It may end up leaking internal
+details in a way which can exert significant pain by locking the
+kernel into a contract that can't be maintained in a reasonable
+manner.
+
+Also, due to the specific nature, cgroup and its controllers don't
+tend to attract attention from a wide scope of developers. cgroup's
+short history is already fraught with severely mis-designed
+interfaces, unnecessary commitments to and exposing of internal
+details, broken and dangerous implementations of various features.
+
+Keeping cgroup as an administration interface is both advantageous for
+its role and imperative given its nature. Some of the cgroup features
+may make sense for unprivileged access. If deemed justified, those
+must be further abstracted and implemented as a different interface,
+be it a system call or process-private filesystem, and survive through
+the scrutiny that any interface for general consumption is required to
+go through.
+
+Requiring CAP is not a complete solution but should serve as a
+significant deterrent against spraying cgroup usages in non-privileged
+programs.