cgroup: status-quo and userland efforts

[Jiri Kosina]

On Wed, 3 Jul 2013, Kay Sievers wrote:

> >> > But that's not my point.  It seems pretty easy to make this cgroup
> >> > management (in "native mode") a library that can have either a thin
> >> > veneer of a main() function, while also being usable by systemd.  The
> >> > point is to solve all of the problems ONCE.  I'm trying to make the
> >> > case that systemd itself should be focusing on features and policies
> >> > and awesome APIs.
> >>
> >> You know, getting this all right isn't easy. If you want to do things
> >> properly, then you need to propagate attribute changes between the units you
> >> manage. You also need something like a scheduler, since a number of
> >> controllers can only be configured under certain external conditions (for
> >> example: the blkio or devices controller use major/minor parameters for
> >> configuring per-device limits. Since major/minor assignments are pretty much
> >> unpredictable these days -- and users probably want to configure things with
> >> friendly and stable /dev/disk/by-id/* symlinks anyway -- this requires us to
> >> wait for devices to show up before we can configure the parameters.) Soo...
> >> you need a graph of units, where you can propagate things, and schedule things
> >> based on some execution/event queue. And the propagation and scheduling are
> >> closely intermingled.
> >
> > you are confusing policy and mechanisms.
> >
> >     The access to cgroupfs is mechanism.
> >
> >     The propagation of changes, the scheduling of cgroupfs access and
> >     the correlation to external conditions are policy.
> >
> > What Tim is asking for is to have a common interface, i.e. a library
> > which implements the low level access to the cgroupfs mechanism
> > without imposing systemd defined policies to it (It might implement a
> > set of common useful policies, but that's a different discussion).
> >
> > That's definitely not an unreasonable request, because he wants to
> > implement his own set of policies which are not necessarily the same
> > as those which are implemented by systemd.
> >
> > You are simply ignoring the fact, that Linux is used in other ways
> > than those which you are focussed on. That's true for Google's way to
> > manage its gazillion machines and that's equally true for the other
> > end of the spectrum which is deep embedded or any other specialized
> > use case. Just face it: running Linux on your laptop and on some RHT
> > lab machines is covering about 1% of the use cases.
> >
> > Nevertheless you repeatedly claim, that systemd is the only way to
> > deal with system startup and system management, is covering _ALL_ use
> > cases and the interfaces you expose are sufficient.
> >
> > Did you ever work on specialized embedded or big data use cases? I
> > really doubt that, but I might be wrong as usual.
> >
> > So I invite you to prove that you can beat an existing setup for an
> > automotive use case with your magic systemd foo. I refund you fully,
> > if you can beat the mark of a functional system less than 800ms after
> > reset release on a 200MHz ARM machine. Functional is defined by the
> > use case requirements and means:
> >
> >     - Basic cgroups management working
> >     - GUI up and running
> >     - Main communication interface (CAN bus) up and running
> >
> > The rest of the system is starting up after that including a more
> > complex cgroup management.
> >
> > According to your claim that systemd is covering everything and some
> > more, this should take you a few hours. I grant you a full week to
> > work on that.
> >
> > The use case Tim is talking about is different, but has similar
> > constraints which are completely driven by his particular use case
> > scenario. I'm sure, that Tim can persuade his management to setup a
> > similar contest to prove your expertise on the other extreme of the
> > Linux world.
> >
> > Before answering please think about the relevance of your statements
> > "getting this all right isn't easy", "something like a scheduler",
> > "users probably want ..."  and "stable /dev/disk/by-id/* symlinks" in
> > those contexts.
> 
> I don't think anybody needs your money.
> 
> But it's sure an improvement over last time when you wanted to use a
> "Kantholz" to make your statement.

Now how about the policy vs. mechanisms part of Thomas' e-mail?

-- 
Jiri Kosina
SUSE Labs