[PATCH v8 01/12] memcg: document cgroup dirty memory interfaces

From: Greg Thelen
Date: Fri Jun 03 2011 - 12:13:29 EST


Document cgroup dirty memory interfaces and statistics.

The implementation for these new interfaces routines comes in a series
of following patches.

Signed-off-by: Andrea Righi <arighi@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Greg Thelen <gthelen@xxxxxxxxxx>
Acked-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Acked-by: Balbir Singh <balbir@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
Documentation/cgroups/memory.txt | 70 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 files changed, 70 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/cgroups/memory.txt b/Documentation/cgroups/memory.txt
index 43b9e46..15019a3 100644
--- a/Documentation/cgroups/memory.txt
+++ b/Documentation/cgroups/memory.txt
@@ -395,6 +395,10 @@ soft_direct_steal- # of pages reclaimed in global hierarchical reclaim from
direct reclaim
soft_direct_scan- # of pages scanned in global hierarchical reclaim from
direct reclaim
+dirty - # of bytes that are waiting to get written back to the disk.
+writeback - # of bytes that are actively being written back to the disk.
+nfs_unstable - # of bytes sent to the NFS server, but not yet committed to
+ the actual storage.
inactive_anon - # of bytes of anonymous memory and swap cache memory on
LRU list.
active_anon - # of bytes of anonymous and swap cache memory on active
@@ -420,6 +424,9 @@ total_soft_kswapd_steal - sum of all children's "soft_kswapd_steal"
total_soft_kswapd_scan - sum of all children's "soft_kswapd_scan"
total_soft_direct_steal - sum of all children's "soft_direct_steal"
total_soft_direct_scan - sum of all children's "soft_direct_scan"
+total_dirty - sum of all children's "dirty"
+total_writeback - sum of all children's "writeback"
+total_nfs_unstable - sum of all children's "nfs_unstable"
total_inactive_anon - sum of all children's "inactive_anon"
total_active_anon - sum of all children's "active_anon"
total_inactive_file - sum of all children's "inactive_file"
@@ -476,6 +483,69 @@ 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 dirty memory
+
+Control the maximum amount of dirty pages a cgroup can have at any given time.
+
+Limiting dirty memory is like fixing the max amount of dirty (hard to reclaim)
+page cache used by a cgroup. So, in case of multiple cgroup writers, they will
+not be able to consume more than their designated share of dirty pages and will
+be throttled if they cross that limit. System-wide dirty limits are also
+consulted. Dirty memory consumption is checked against both system-wide and
+per-cgroup dirty limits.
+
+The interface is similar to the procfs interface: /proc/sys/vm/dirty_*. It is
+possible to configure a limit to trigger throttling of a dirtier or queue
+background writeback. The root cgroup memory.dirty_* control files are
+read-only and match the contents of the /proc/sys/vm/dirty_* files.
+
+Per-cgroup dirty limits can be set using the following files in the cgroupfs:
+
+- memory.dirty_ratio: the amount of dirty memory (expressed as a percentage of
+ cgroup memory) at which a process generating dirty pages will be throttled.
+ The default value is the system-wide dirty ratio, /proc/sys/vm/dirty_ratio.
+
+- memory.dirty_limit_in_bytes: the amount of dirty memory (expressed in bytes)
+ in the cgroup at which a process generating dirty pages will be throttled.
+ Suffix (k, K, m, M, g, or G) can be used to indicate that value is kilo, mega
+ or gigabytes. The default value is the system-wide dirty limit,
+ /proc/sys/vm/dirty_bytes.
+
+ Note: memory.dirty_limit_in_bytes is the counterpart of memory.dirty_ratio.
+ Only one may be specified at a time. When one is written it is immediately
+ taken into account to evaluate the dirty memory limits and the other appears
+ as 0 when read.
+
+- memory.dirty_background_ratio: the amount of dirty memory of the cgroup
+ (expressed as a percentage of cgroup memory) at which background writeback
+ kernel threads will start writing out dirty data. The default value is the
+ system-wide background dirty ratio, /proc/sys/vm/dirty_background_ratio.
+
+- memory.dirty_background_limit_in_bytes: the amount of dirty memory (expressed
+ in bytes) in the cgroup at which background writeback kernel threads will
+ start writing out dirty data. Suffix (k, K, m, M, g, or G) can be used to
+ indicate that value is kilo, mega or gigabytes. The default value is the
+ system-wide dirty background limit, /proc/sys/vm/dirty_background_bytes.
+
+ Note: memory.dirty_background_limit_in_bytes is the counterpart of
+ memory.dirty_background_ratio. Only one may be specified at a time. When one
+ is written it is immediately taken into account to evaluate the dirty memory
+ limits and the other appears as 0 when read.
+
+A cgroup may contain more dirty memory than its dirty limit. This is possible
+because of the principle that the first cgroup to touch a page is charged for
+it. Subsequent page counting events (dirty, writeback, nfs_unstable) are also
+counted to the originally charged cgroup. Example: If page is allocated by a
+cgroup A task, then the page is charged to cgroup A. If the page is later
+dirtied by a task in cgroup B, then the cgroup A dirty count will be
+incremented. If cgroup A is over its dirty limit but cgroup B is not, then
+dirtying a cgroup A page from a cgroup B task may push cgroup A over its dirty
+limit without throttling the dirtying cgroup B task.
+
+When use_hierarchy=0, each cgroup has independent dirty memory usage and limits.
+When use_hierarchy=1 the dirty limits of parent cgroups are also checked to
+ensure that no dirty limit is exceeded.
+
6. Hierarchy support

The memory controller supports a deep hierarchy and hierarchical accounting.
--
1.7.3.1

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