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authorAnton Vorontsov <anton.vorontsov@linaro.org>2013-04-29 15:08:31 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2013-04-29 15:54:38 -0700
commit70ddf637eebe47e61fb2be08a59315581b6d2f38 (patch)
tree7fdb9e04da11c191daa225cad2314e440effc176 /Documentation
parent84d96d897671cfb386e722acbefdb3a79e115a8a (diff)
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memcg: add memory.pressure_level events
With this patch userland applications that want to maintain the interactivity/memory allocation cost can use the pressure level notifications. The levels are defined like this: 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.) Performance wise, the memory pressure notifications feature itself is lightweight and does not require much of bookkeeping, in contrast to the rest of memcg features. Unfortunately, as of current memcg implementation, pages accounting is an inseparable part and cannot be turned off. The good news is that there are some efforts[1] to improve the situation; plus, implementing the same, fully API-compatible[2] interface for CONFIG_MEMCG=n case (e.g. embedded) is also a viable option, so it will not require any changes on the userland side. [1] http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.cgroups/6291 [2] http://lkml.org/lkml/2013/2/21/454 [akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix CONFIG_CGROPUPS=n warnings] Signed-off-by: Anton Vorontsov <anton.vorontsov@linaro.org> Acked-by: Kirill A. Shutemov <kirill@shutemov.name> Acked-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> Cc: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org> Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> Cc: Pekka Enberg <penberg@kernel.org> Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de> Cc: Glauber Costa <glommer@parallels.com> Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz> Cc: Luiz Capitulino <lcapitulino@redhat.com> Cc: Greg Thelen <gthelen@google.com> Cc: Leonid Moiseichuk <leonid.moiseichuk@nokia.com> Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@gmail.com> Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org> Cc: Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz <b.zolnierkie@samsung.com> Cc: John Stultz <john.stultz@linaro.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/cgroups/memory.txt70
1 files changed, 69 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/cgroups/memory.txt b/Documentation/cgroups/memory.txt
index 8b8c28b..f336ede 100644
--- a/Documentation/cgroups/memory.txt
+++ b/Documentation/cgroups/memory.txt
@@ -40,6 +40,7 @@ Features:
- 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.
@@ -65,6 +66,7 @@ Brief summary of control files.
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
@@ -762,7 +764,73 @@ At reading, current status of OOM is shown.
under_oom 0 or 1 (if 1, the memory cgroup is under OOM, tasks may
be stopped.)
-11. TODO
+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. Add support for accounting huge pages (as a separate controller)
2. Make per-cgroup scanner reclaim not-shared pages first
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