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.TH CGROUPS 7 2016-04-24 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
cgroups \- Linux control groups
.SH DESCRIPTION
Control cgroups, usually referred to as cgroups,
are a Linux kernel feature which provides for grouping of tasks and
resource tracking and limitations for those groups.
While several systems have been introduced to help in configuring and
managing cgroups, the kernel's cgroup interface is provided through
a pseudo-filesystem called cgroupfs.
Task grouping is implemented in the core cgroup kernel code,
while resource tracking and limits are implemented in
a set of per-resource-type subsystems (memory, CPU, and so on) which may be
enabled as separate hierarchies, or joined into comounted hierarchies.

Each hierarchy constitutes a separate mount of the cgroup filesystem,
with the subsystems enabled in that hierarchy listed in the mount options.
For each mounted hierarchy,
the directory tree mirrors the control group hierarchy.
Each control group is represented by a directory, with each of its child
control cgroups represented as a child directory.
For instance,
.IR /user/joe/1.session
represents control group
.IR 1.session ,
which is a child of cgroup
.IR joe ,
which is a child of
.IR /user .
Under each cgroup directory is a set of files which can be read or
written to, reflecting resource limits and a few general cgroup
properties.

In general, cgroup limits are hierarchical, meaning that the limits placed on
.IR /user/joe
cannot be exceeded by
.IR /usr/joe/1.session .
There are currently exceptions to this rule,
but stricter adherence is a goal as cgroups are being largely reworked.

In addition, cgroups can be mounted with no bound subsystem, in which case
they serve only to track processes.
An example of this is the
.I name=systemd
cgroup which is used by
.BR systemd (1)
to track services and user sessions.
.\"
.SS Terminology
A
.I cgroup
is a collection of processes that are bound to a set of
limits or parameters defined via the cgroup filesystem.

A
.I subsystem
is a kernel component that modifies the behavior of
the processes in a cgroup.
Various subsystems have been implemented, making it possible to do things
such as limiting the amount of CPU time and memory available to a cgroup,
accounting for the CPU time used by a cgroup,
and freezing and resuming execution of the processes in a cgroup.
Subsystems are sometimes also known as
.IR "resource controllers"
(or simply, controllers).

The cgroups for a subsystem are arranged in a
.IR hierarchy .
This hierarchy is defined by creating, removing, and
renaming subdirectories within the cgroup filesystem.
At each level of the hierarchy, attributes (e.g., limits) can be defined;
these attributes may govern or propagate
to child cgroups and and their descendants in the hierarchy.
.\"
.SS Cgroups version 1 and version 2
The initial release of the cgroups implementation was in Linux 2.6.24.
Over time, various cgroup subsystems have been added
to allow the management of various types of resources.
However, the development of these subsystems was largely uncoordinated,
with the result that many inconsistencies arose between subsystems
and management of the cgroup hierarchies became rather complex.
(A longer description of these problems can be found in
the kernel source file
.IR Documentation/cgroup\-v2.txt .)

Because of the problems with the initial cgroups implementation,
now known as cgroups version 1,
starting in Linux 3.10, work began on a new,
orthogonal implementation to remedy these problems.
Initially marked experimental, and hidden behind the
.I "\-o\ __DEVEL__sane_behavior"
mount option, the new version (cgroups version 2)
was eventually made official with the release of Linux 4.5.
Differences between the two versions are described in the text below.

Although cgroups v2 is intended as a replacement for cgroups v1,
the older system continues to exist
(and for compatibility reasons is unlikely to be removed).
Currently, cgroups v2 implements only a subset of the controllers
available in cgroups v1.
The two systems are implemented so that both v1 controllers and
v2 controllers can be mounted on the same system.
Thus, for example, it is possible to use those controllers
that are supported under version 2,
while also using version 1 controllers
where version 2 does not yet support those controllers.
.\"
.SS Tasks versus processes
In cgroups v1, a distinction is drawn between
.I processes
and
.IR tasks .
In this view, a process can consist of multiple tasks
(more commonly called threads, from a user-space perspective).
In cgroups v1, it is possible independently manipulate
the cgroup memberships of the tasks in a process.
Because this ability caused certain problems,
.\" FIXME Add some text describing why this was a problem.
the ability to independently manipulate the cgroup memberships
of the tasks in a process has been removed in cgroups v2.
Cgroups v2 allows manipulation of cgroup membership only for processes
(which has the effect of changing the cgroup membership of
all tasks in the process).
.\"
.SS Mounting
To be available, a given cgroup subsystem must be compiled into the
kernel.
Since they are exposed through a virtual filesystem, subsystems
must be mounted before they can be controlled.
The usual place for this is under
.IR /sys/fs/cgroup .
If all the desired subsystems can be comounted,
then can do so with the following command:

    mount \-t cgroup \-o all cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup

(One can achieve the same result by omitting
.IR "\-o all" ,
since it is the default if subsystems are explicitly specified.)

If multiple, separately mounted subsystems are desired, then this is
usually done in per-subsystem subdirectories.
This requires first mounting a tmpfs under
.I /sys/fs/cgroup
so that subdirectories can be created.
For instance, one could mount
.IR cpu ,
.IR memory ,
and
.I devices
cgroups as follows:

.nf
.in +4n
mount \-t tmpfs \-o size=100000,mode=755 cgroups /sys/fs/cgroup
for s in cpu memory devices; do
    mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/$s
    mount \-t cgroup \-o $s $s /sys/fs/cgroup/$s
done
.in
.fi

Comounting subsystems has the effect that a task is in the same cgroup for
all comounted subsystems.
Separately mounting subsystems allows a task to
be in cgroup
.I /foo1
for one subsystem while being in
.I /foo2/foo3
for another.
.\"
.SS Introspection
The list of subsystems compiled into the kernel can be seen in the file
.IR /proc/cgroups .
The file
.I /proc/pid/cgroup
lists the task's current cgroup
membership for each mounted hierarchy.
.\"
.SS Creating cgroups and moving tasks
The system begins with a single root cgroup (per hierarchy), '/', which all tasks belong to.
A new cgroup is created by creating a directory in the cgroup filesystem:

    mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu/cg1

This creates a new empty cgroup.
Tasks may be moved to this cgroup by writing
their PIDs into the cgroup's
.I cgroup.procs
(deprecated)
.I tasks
file:

    echo $$ > /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu/cg1/cgroup.procs

The same file can be read to obtain a list of the processes currently in
.IR cg1 .
By using the
.I cgroup.procs
file instead of the
.I tasks
file, all tasks in the
thread group are moved into the new cgroup at once.

On
.BR fork (2),
the new child is created as a member of the parent's cgroup,
leading to implicit grouping of process hierarchies.

Note: in the upcoming unified hierarchy, a new restriction is imposed such
that tasks may only exist in leaf cgroups.
For instance, if cgroup
.I /cg1/cg2
exists, then a task may exist in
.IR /cg1/cg2 ,
but not in
.IR /cg1 .
This is to avoid the current ambiguity in the delegation of resources
between tasks in
.I /cg1
and its child cgroups.
The recommended workaround is to create a subdirectory called
.I leaf
for any non-leaf cgroup which should contain tasks, and make sure not to
create child cgroups of it.
In the above example, tasks which previously would have gone into
.I /cg1
would now go into
.IR /cg1/leaf .
This has the advantage of making explicit the relationship between tasks in
.I /cg1/leaf
and
.IR /cg1 's
other children.
.\"
.SS Removing cgroups
To remove a cgroup, it must first have no child cgroups and contain no tasks.
So long as that is the case,
the cgroup by removing the corresponding directory pathname.

A special file in each cgroup hierarchy,
.IR release_agent ,
can be used to register a program to handle cgroups which become newly empty.
The program will be called each time a cgroup marked for
autoremove becomes empty and childless.
The cgroup path will be provided as the first command-line argument.
The cgroup must be marked as eligible for autoremove by writing '1' into its
.IR notify_on_release
file;
this value is inherited by newly created child cgroups.

A new feature in cgroups v2 is the
.I cgroup.populated
file.
This reads 0 if there are no tasks in the cgroup or its descendants,
and 1 otherwise.
It can be watched for changes using
.BR inotify (7).
This allows user-space applications to efficiently watch cgroups
for autoremove conditions.
.\"
.SS Cgroups version 2
In cgroups v2,
all mounted controllers reside in a single unified hierarchy.
While (different) controllers may be simultaneously
mounted under the v1 and v2 hierarchies,
it is not possible to mount the same controller simultaneously
under both the v1 and the v2 hierarchies.

The new behaviors in cgroups v2 are summarized below:
.TP 3
1. Tasks only in leaf nodes
With the exception of the root cgroup, tasks may only reside in leaf nodes.
This avoids the need to decide how to partition resources between tasks which
are members of cgroup A and tasks in child cgroups of A.
.TP
2. Active cgroups must be specified
The unified hierarchy presents two new files,
.IR cgroup.controllers
and
.IR cgroup.subtree_control .
When a cgroup
.I A/b
is created, its
.IR cgroup.controllers
file contains the list of controllers which were active in its parent, A.
This is the list of controllers which are available to this cgroup.
No controllers are active until they are enabled through the
.IR cgroup.subtree_control
file, by writing the list of space-delimited names of the controllers,
each preceded by '+' (to enable) or '\-' (to disable).
If the
.I freezer
controller is not enabled in
.IR /A/B ,
then it cannot be enabled in
.IR /A/B/C .
.TP
3. No "tasks" or "cgroup.clone_children" files
.TP
4. Empty cgroup notification
A new file,
.IR cgroup.populated ,
under each cgroup contains '0' when the
cgroup is empty, and 1 when it is populated.
It therefore may be watched to detect when a cgroup becomes (non-)empty.
This replaces the original notify-on-release mechanism.

For more changes, please see the
.I Documentation/cgroups/unified-hierarchy
file in the kernel source.
.\"
.SS Cgroups version 1 subsystems
Each of the cgroups version 1 subsystems is governed
by a kernel configuration option (listed below).
Additionally, the availability of the cgroups feature is governed by the
.BR CONFIG_CGROUPS
kernel configuration option.
.TP
.IR cpu " (since Linux 2.6.24; " \fBCONFIG_CGROUP_SCHED\fP )
Cgroups can be guaranteed a minimum number of "CPU shares"
when a system is busy.
This does not limit a cgroup's CPU usage if the CPUs are not busy.
.TP
.IR cpuacct " (since Linux 2.6.24; " \fBCONFIG_CGROUP_CPUACCT\fP )
This provides accounting for CPU usage by groups of tasks.
.TP
.IR cpuset " (since Linux 2.6.24; " \fBCONFIG_CPUSETS\fP )
This cgroup can be used to bind the tasks in a cgroup to
a specified set of CPUs and NUMA nodes.
.TP
.IR memory " (since Linux 2.6.25; " \fBCONFIG_MEMCG\fP )
The memory controller supports reporting and limiting of process memory, kernel
memory, and swap used by cgroups.
.TP
.IR devices " (since Linux 2.6.26; " \fBCONFIG_CGROUP_DEVICE\fP )
This supports controlling which tasks may create (mknod) devices as
well as open them for reading or writing.
The policies may be specified as whitelists and blacklists.
Hierarchy is enforced, so new rules must not
violate existing rules for the target or ancestor cgroups.
.TP
.IR freezer " (since Linux 2.6.28; " \fBCONFIG_CGROUP_FREEZER\fP )
The
.IR freezer
cgroup can suspend and restore (resume) all tasks in a cgroup.
Freezing a cgroup
.I /A
also causes its children, for example, tasks in
.IR /A/B ,
to be frozen.
.TP
.IR net_cls " (since Linux 2.6.29; " \fBCONFIG_CGROUP_NET_CLASSID\fP )
This places a classid, specified for the cgroup, on network packets
created by a cgroup.
These classids can then be used in firewall rules,
as well as used to shape traffic using
.BR tc (8).
This only applies to packets
leaving the cgroup, not to traffic arriving at the cgroup.
.TP
.IR blkio " (since Linux 2.6.33; " \fBCONFIG_BLK_CGROUP\fP )
The
.I blkio
cgroup controls and limits access to specified block devices by 
applying IO control in the form of throttling and upper limits against leaf
nodes and intermediate nodes in the storage hierarchy.

Two policies are available.
The first is a proportional-weight time-based division
of disk implemented with CFQ.
This is in effect for leaf nodes using CFQ.
The second is a throttling policy which specifies
upper I/O rate limits on a device.
.TP
.IR perf_event " (since Linux 2.6.39; " \fBCONFIG_CGROUP_PERF\fP )
This controller allows
.I perf
monitoring of the set of processes grouped in a cgroup.
.TP
.IR net_prio " (since Linux 3.3; " \fBCONFIG_CGROUP_NET_PRIO\fP )
This allows priorities to be specified, per network interface, for cgroups.
.TP
.IR hugetlb " (since Linux 3.5; " \fBCONFIG_CGROUP_HUGETLB\fP )
This supports limiting the use of huge pages by cgroups.
.TP
.IR pids " (since Linux 4.3; " \fBCONFIG_CGROUP_PIDS\fP )
This controller permits limiting the number of process that may be created
in a cgroup (and its descendants).
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR cpuset (7),
.BR namespaces (7)