Linux Cgroups – How to Check if Cgroup v2 is Installed on Your Machine

cgroupslinux

I want to try cgroup v2 but am not sure if it is installed on my linux machine

>> uname -r
4.14.66-041466-generic

Since cgroup v2 is available in 4.12.0-rc5, I assume it should be available in the kernel version I am using.

https://www.infradead.org/~mchehab/kernel_docs/unsorted/cgroup-v2.html

However, it does not seem like my system has cgroup v2 as the memory interface files mentioned in its documentation are not available on my system.

https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/cgroup-v2.txt

It seems like I still have cgroup v1.

/sys/fs/cgroup/memory# ls
cgroup.clone_children  memory.kmem.failcnt                 memory.kmem.tcp.usage_in_bytes   memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes      memory.swappiness
cgroup.event_control   memory.kmem.limit_in_bytes          memory.kmem.usage_in_bytes       memory.move_charge_at_immigrate  memory.usage_in_bytes
cgroup.procs           memory.kmem.max_usage_in_bytes      memory.limit_in_bytes            memory.numa_stat                 memory.use_hierarchy
cgroup.sane_behavior   memory.kmem.slabinfo                memory.max_usage_in_bytes        memory.oom_control               notify_on_release
docker                 memory.kmem.tcp.failcnt             memory.memsw.failcnt             memory.pressure_level            release_agent
memory.failcnt         memory.kmem.tcp.limit_in_bytes      memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes      memory.soft_limit_in_bytes       tasks
memory.force_empty     memory.kmem.tcp.max_usage_in_bytes  memory.memsw.max_usage_in_bytes  memory.stat

Follow-up questions
Thanks Brian for the help. Please let me know if I should be creating a new question but I think it might be helpful to other if I just ask my questions here.

1) I am unable to add cgroup controllers, following the command in the doc

>> echo "+cpu +memory -io" > cgroup.subtree_control

However, I got "echo: write error: Invalid argument". Am I missing a prerequisite to this step?

2) I ran a docker container but the docker daemon log complained about not able to find "/sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset/docker/cpuset.cpus". It seems like docker is still expecting cgroupv1. What is the best way to enable cgroupv2 support on my docker daemon?

docker -v
Docker version 17.09.1-ce, build aedabb7

Best Answer

The easiest way is to attempt to mount the pseudo-filesystem. If you can mount it to a location, then you can attempt to manage processes with the interface:

mount -t cgroup2 none $MOUNT_POINT

I see that you cited the documentation above. One of the points you may be missing is that the paths still need to be created. There's no reason you must manage cgroup resources at any particular location. It's just convention.

For example, you could totally present procfs at /usr/monkeys... as long as the directory /usr/monkeys exists:

$ sudo mkdir /usr/monkeys
$ sudo mount -t proc none /usr/monkeys
$ ls -l /usr/monkeys
...
...
-r--r--r--.  1 root        root                      0 Sep 25 19:00 uptime
-r--r--r--.  1 root        root                      0 Sep 25 23:17 version
-r--------.  1 root        root                      0 Sep 25 23:17 vmallocinfo
-r--r--r--.  1 root        root                      0 Sep 25 18:57 vmstat
-r--r--r--.  1 root        root                      0 Sep 25 23:17 zoneinfo
$ sudo umount /usr/monkeys

In the same way I can do this with the cgroup v2 pseudo-filesystem:

$ sudo mount -t cgroup2 none /usr/monkeys
$ ls -l /usr/monkeys
total 0
-r--r--r--.  1 root root 0 Sep 23 16:58 cgroup.controllers
-rw-r--r--.  1 root root 0 Sep 23 16:58 cgroup.max.depth
-rw-r--r--.  1 root root 0 Sep 23 16:58 cgroup.max.descendants
-rw-r--r--.  1 root root 0 Sep 23 16:58 cgroup.procs
-r--r--r--.  1 root root 0 Sep 23 16:58 cgroup.stat
-rw-r--r--.  1 root root 0 Sep 23 16:58 cgroup.subtree_control
-rw-r--r--.  1 root root 0 Sep 23 16:58 cgroup.threads
drwxr-xr-x.  2 root root 0 Sep 23 16:58 init.scope
drwxr-xr-x.  2 root root 0 Sep 23 16:58 machine.slice
drwxr-xr-x. 59 root root 0 Sep 23 16:58 system.slice
drwxr-xr-x.  4 root root 0 Sep 23 16:58 user.slice
$ sudo umount /usr/monkeys
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