[PATCH 01/16] blkio: Documentation

Vivek Goyal
2009-11-13T01:41:53Z

Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt | 100 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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+ Block IO Controller
+ ===================
+Overview
+========
+cgroup subsys "blkio" implements the block io controller. There seems to be
+a need of various kind of IO control policies (like proportional BW, max BW)
+both at leaf nodes as well as at intermediate nodes in storage hierarchy. Plan
+is to use same cgroup based management interface for blkio controller and
+based on user options switch IO policies in the background.
+
+In the first phase, this patchset implements 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.
+
+HOWTO
+=====
+You can do a very simple testing of running two dd threads in two different
+cgroups. Here is what you can do.
+
+- Enable group scheduling in CFQ
+ CONFIG_CFQ_GROUP_IOSCHED=y
+
+- Compile and boot into kernel and mount IO controller (blkio).
+
+ mount -t cgroup -o blkio none /cgroup
+
+- Create two cgroups
+ mkdir -p /cgroup/test1/ /cgroup/test2
+
+- Set weights of group test1 and test2
+ echo 1000 > /cgroup/test1/blkio.weight
+ echo 500 > /cgroup/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 $! > /cgroup/test1/tasks
+ cat /cgroup/test1/tasks
+
+ dd if=/mnt/sdb/zerofile2 of=/dev/null &
+ echo $! > /cgroup/test2/tasks
+ cat /cgroup/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.
+
+Various user visible config options
+===================================
+CONFIG_CFQ_GROUP_IOSCHED
+ - Enables group scheduling in CFQ. Currently only 1 level of group
+ creation is allowed.
+
+CONFIG_DEBUG_CFQ_IOSCHED
+ - Enables some debugging messages in blktrace. Also creates extra
+ cgroup file blkio.dequeue.
+
+Config options selected automatically
+=====================================
+These config options are not user visible and are selected/deselected
+automatically based on IO scheduler configuration.
+
+CONFIG_BLK_CGROUP
+ - Block IO controller. Selected by CONFIG_CFQ_GROUP_IOSCHED.
+
+CONFIG_DEBUG_BLK_CGROUP
+ - Debug help. Selected by CONFIG_DEBUG_CFQ_IOSCHED.
+
+Details of cgroup files
+=======================
+- blkio.weight
+ - Specifies per cgroup weight.
+
+ Currently allowed range of weights is from 100 to 1000.
+
+- 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.dequeue
+ - Debugging aid only enabled if CONFIG_DEBUG_CFQ_IOSCHED=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.
--
1.6.2.5