Re: [PATCHSET for-4.11] cgroup: implement cgroup v2 thread mode

On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 1:52 PM, Tejun Heo [off-list ref] wrote:

Hello,

On Thu, Feb 02, 2017 at 01:32:19PM -0800, Andy Lutomirski wrote:

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* Thread mode is explicitly enabled on a cgroup by writing "enable"
  into "cgroup.threads" file.  The cgroup shouldn't have any child
  cgroups or enabled controllers.

Why do you need to manually turn it on?  That is, couldn't it be
automatic based on what controllers are enabled?

This came up already but it's not like some controllers are inherently
thread-only.  Consider CPU, all in-context CPU cycle consumptions are
tied to the thread; however, we also want to be able to account for
CPU cycles consumed for, for example, memory reclaim or encryption
during writeback.

Is this flexible enough for the real-world usecases?  For my use case
(if I actually ported over to this), it would mean that I'd have to
enable thread mode on the root.  What about letting a given process
(actually mm, perhaps) live in a cgroup but let the threads be in
different cgroups without any particular constraints.  Then
process-wide stuff would be accounted to the cgroup that owns the
process.

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* Once enabled, arbitrary sub-hierarchy can be created and threads can
  be put anywhere in the subtree by writing TIDs into "cgroup.threads"
  file.  Process granularity and no-internal-process constraint don't
  apply in a threaded subtree.

I'm a bit worried that this conflates two different things.  There's
thread support, i.e. allowing individual threads to be placed into
cgroups.  There's also more flexible sub-hierarchy support, i.e.
relaxing no-internal-process constraints.  For the "cpuacct"
controller, for example, both of these make sense.  But what if
someone writes a controller (directio, for example, just to make
something up) for which thread granularity makes sense but relaxing
no-internal-process constraints does not?

If a controller can't possibly define how internal competition should
be handled, which is unlikely - the problem is being consistent and
sensible, defining something isn't difficult - the controller can
simply error out those cases either on configuration or migration.
Again, I'm very doubtful we'll need that but if we ever need that
denying specific configurations is the best we can do anyway.

I'm not sure I follow.

I'm suggesting something quite simple: let controllers that don't need
the no-internal-process constraints set a flag so that the constraints
don't apply if all enabled controllers have the flag set.

--Andy