Re: [patch 2/2] mm: memcontrol: default hierarchy interface for memory

From: Johannes Weiner
Date: Wed Jan 14 2015 - 11:01:16 EST


On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 03:20:08PM -0800, Greg Thelen wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jan 08 2015, Johannes Weiner wrote:
>
> > Introduce the basic control files to account, partition, and limit
> > memory using cgroups in default hierarchy mode.
> >
> > This interface versioning allows us to address fundamental design
> > issues in the existing memory cgroup interface, further explained
> > below. The old interface will be maintained indefinitely, but a
> > clearer model and improved workload performance should encourage
> > existing users to switch over to the new one eventually.
> >
> > The control files are thus:
> >
> > - memory.current shows the current consumption of the cgroup and its
> > descendants, in bytes.
> >
> > - memory.low configures the lower end of the cgroup's expected
> > memory consumption range. The kernel considers memory below that
> > boundary to be a reserve - the minimum that the workload needs in
> > order to make forward progress - and generally avoids reclaiming
> > it, unless there is an imminent risk of entering an OOM situation.
>
> So this is try-hard, but no-promises interface. No complaints. But I
> assume that an eventual extension is a more rigid memory.min which
> specifies a minimum working set under which an container would prefer an
> oom kill to thrashing.

Yes, memory.min would nicely complement memory.max and I wouldn't be
opposed to adding it. However, that does require at least some level
of cgroup-awareness in the global OOM killer in order to route kills
meaningfully according to cgroup configuration, which is mainly why I
deferred it in this patch.
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