Re: [-mm][PATCH 4/4] Add rlimit controller documentation

[Balbir Singh <balbir@linux.vnet.ibm.com>]

Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Sun, 04 May 2008 03:08:25 +0530
> Balbir Singh <balbir@linux.vnet.ibm.com> wrote:
> 
>>
>> This is the documentation patch. It describes the rlimit controller and how
>> to build and use it.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Balbir Singh <balbir@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
>> ---
>>
>>  Documentation/controllers/rlimit.txt |   29 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>  1 file changed, 29 insertions(+)
>>
>> diff -puN /dev/null Documentation/controllers/rlimit.txt
>> --- /dev/null	2008-05-03 22:12:13.033285313 +0530
>> +++ linux-2.6.25-balbir/Documentation/controllers/rlimit.txt	2008-05-04 03:06:06.000000000 +0530
>> @@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
>> +This controller is enabled by the CONFIG_CGROUP_RLIMIT_CTLR option. Prior
>> +to reading this documentation please read Documentation/cgroups.txt and
>> +Documentation/controllers/memory.txt. Several of the principles of this
>> +controller are similar to the memory resource controller.
>> +
>> +This controller framework is designed to be extensible to control any
>> +resource limit (memory related) with little effort.
>> +
>> +This new controller, controls the address space expansion of the tasks
>> +belonging to a cgroup. Address space control is provided along the same lines as
>> +RLIMIT_AS control, which is available via getrlimit(2)/setrlimit(2).
>> +The interface for controlling address space is provided through
>> +"rlimit.limit_in_bytes". The file is similar to "limit_in_bytes" w.r.t. the user
>> +interface. Please see section 3 of the memory resource controller documentation
>> +for more details on how to use the user interface to get and set values.
>> +
>> +The "rlimit.usage_in_bytes" file provides information about the total address
>> +space usage of the tasks in the cgroup, in bytes.
> 
> Finally, with a bit of between-the-line reading, I begin to understand what
> this stuff is actually supposed to do.
> 
> It puts an upper limit upon the _total_ address-space size of all the mms
> which are contained within the resource group, yes?
> 

Yesm true

> (can am mm be shared by two threads whcih are in different resource groups,
> btw?)
> 

Yes, that can happen, but all the charges go to mm->owner (the thread group leader).

>> +Advantages of providing this feature
>> +
>> +1. Control over virtual address space allows for a cgroup to fail gracefully
>> +   i.e., via a malloc or mmap failure as compared to OOM kill when no
>> +   pages can be reclaimed.
>> +2. It provides better control over how many pages can be swapped out when
>> +   the cgroup goes over its limit. A badly setup cgroup can cause excessive
>> +   swapping. Providing control over the address space allocations ensures
>> +   that the system administrator has control over the total swapping that
>> +   can take place.
> 
> Here's another missing piece: what is the kernel's behaviour when such a
> limit is increased?  Seems that the sole option is a failure return from

Do you mean limit is exceeded?

> mmap/brk/sbrk/etc, yes?
> 

If so, Yes, true.

> This should be spelled out in careful detail, please.  This is a
> newly-proposed kernel<->userspace interface and we care about those very
> much.
> 

Sure, I'll document that better.

> Finally, I worry about overflows.  afacit the
> sum-of-address-space-sizes-for-a-cgroup is accounted for in an unsigned
> long?
> 
> If so, a 32-bit machine could easily overflow it.
> 

We use an unsigned long long on all architectures to avoid overflow.

> And a 64-bit machine could possibly do so with a bit of effort, perhaps? 
> That's assuming that the code doesn't attempt to avoid duplicate accounting
> due to multiple-mms-mapping-the-same-pages, which afaict appears to be the
> case.  (Then again, perhaps no machine will ever have the pagetable space
> to get that far).
> 
> 

True

> 
> Ho hum, I had to do rather a lot of guesswork here to try to understand
> your proposed overall design for this feature.  I'd prefer to hear about
> your design via more direct means.

Do you have any suggestions on how to do that better. Would you like
documentation to be the first patch in the series? I had sent out two RFC's
earlier and got comments and feedback from several people.

Having said that, I do agree that design is the most vital thing of any patchset
and communicating that up front and better is critical. I am open to any
suggestions to help make that process better.


-- 
	Warm Regards,
	Balbir Singh
	Linux Technology Center
	IBM, ISTL

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