cgroups(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual cgroups(7)
NAME
cgroups - Linux control groups
DESCRIPTION
Control groups, usually referred to as cgroups, are a Linux kernel fea-
ture which allow processes to be organized into hierarchical groups
whose usage of various types of resources can then be limited and moni-
tored. The kernel's cgroup interface is provided through a pseudo-
filesystem called cgroupfs. 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).
Terminology
A cgroup is a collection of processes that are bound to a set of limits
or parameters defined via the cgroup filesystem.
A 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 resource controllers (or
simply, controllers).
The cgroups for a controller are arranged in a hierarchy. This hierar-
chy 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. The limits, control, and accounting pro-
vided by cgroups generally have effect throughout the subhierarchy un-
derneath the cgroup where the attributes are defined. Thus, for exam-
ple, the limits placed on a cgroup at a higher level in the hierarchy
cannot be exceeded by descendant cgroups.
Cgroups version 1 and version 2
The initial release of the cgroups implementation was in Linux 2.6.24.
Over time, various cgroup controllers have been added to allow the man-
agement of various types of resources. However, the development of
these controllers was largely uncoordinated, with the result that many
inconsistencies arose between controllers and management of the cgroup
hierarchies became rather complex. A longer description of these prob-
lems can be found in the kernel source file Documentation/ad-
min-guide/cgroup-v2.rst (or Documentation/cgroup-v2.txt in Linux 4.17
and earlier).
Because of the problems with the initial cgroups implementation (cgroups
version 1), starting in Linux 3.10, work began on a new, orthogonal im-
plementation to remedy these problems. Initially marked experimental,
and hidden behind the -o __DEVEL__sane_behavior mount option, the new
version (cgroups version 2) was eventually made official with the re-
lease of Linux 4.5. Differences between the two versions are described
in the text below. The file cgroup.sane_behavior, present in cgroups
v1, is a relic of this mount option. The file always reports "0" and is
only retained for backward compatibility.
Although cgroups v2 is intended as a replacement for cgroups v1, the
older system continues to exist (and for compatibility reasons is un-
likely to be removed). Currently, cgroups v2 implements only a subset
of the controllers available in cgroups v1. The two systems are imple-
mented so that both v1 controllers and v2 controllers can be mounted on
the same system. Thus, for example, it is possible to use those con-
trollers that are supported under version 2, while also using version 1
controllers where version 2 does not yet support those controllers. The
only restriction here is that a controller can't be simultaneously em-
ployed in both a cgroups v1 hierarchy and in the cgroups v2 hierarchy.
CGROUPS VERSION 1
Under cgroups v1, each controller may be mounted against a separate
cgroup filesystem that provides its own hierarchical organization of the
processes on the system. It is also possible to comount multiple (or
even all) cgroups v1 controllers against the same cgroup filesystem,
meaning that the comounted controllers manage the same hierarchical or-
ganization of processes.
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 in-
stance, /user/joe/1.session represents control group 1.session, which is
a child of cgroup joe, which is a child of /user. Under each cgroup di-
rectory is a set of files which can be read or written to, reflecting
resource limits and a few general cgroup properties.
Tasks (threads) versus processes
In cgroups v1, a distinction is drawn between processes and tasks. In
this view, a process can consist of multiple tasks (more commonly called
threads, from a user-space perspective, and called such in the remainder
of this man page). In cgroups v1, it is possible to independently ma-
nipulate the cgroup memberships of the threads in a process.
The cgroups v1 ability to split threads across different cgroups caused
problems in some cases. For example, it made no sense for the memory
controller, since all of the threads of a process share a single address
space. Because of these problems, the ability to independently manipu-
late the cgroup memberships of the threads in a process was removed in
the initial cgroups v2 implementation, and subsequently restored in a
more limited form (see the discussion of "thread mode" below).
Mounting v1 controllers
The use of cgroups requires a kernel built with the CONFIG_CGROUP op-
tion. In addition, each of the v1 controllers has an associated config-
uration option that must be set in order to employ that controller.
In order to use a v1 controller, it must be mounted against a cgroup
filesystem. The usual place for such mounts is under a tmpfs(5)
filesystem mounted at /sys/fs/cgroup. Thus, one might mount the cpu
controller as follows:
mount -t cgroup -o cpu none /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu
It is possible to comount multiple controllers against the same hierar-
chy. For example, here the cpu and cpuacct controllers are comounted
against a single hierarchy:
mount -t cgroup -o cpu,cpuacct none /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu,cpuacct
Comounting controllers has the effect that a process is in the same
cgroup for all of the comounted controllers. Separately mounting con-
trollers allows a process to be in cgroup /foo1 for one controller while
being in /foo2/foo3 for another.
It is possible to comount all v1 controllers against the same hierarchy:
mount -t cgroup -o all cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup
(One can achieve the same result by omitting -o all, since it is the de-
fault if no controllers are explicitly specified.)
It is not possible to mount the same controller against multiple cgroup
hierarchies. For example, it is not possible to mount both the cpu and
cpuacct controllers against one hierarchy, and to mount the cpu con-
troller alone against another hierarchy. It is possible to create mul-
tiple mount with exactly the same set of comounted controllers. How-
ever, in this case all that results is multiple mount points providing a
view of the same hierarchy.
Note that on many systems, the v1 controllers are automatically mounted
under /sys/fs/cgroup; in particular, systemd(1) automatically creates
such mounts.
Unmounting v1 controllers
A mounted cgroup filesystem can be unmounted using the umount(8) com-
mand, as in the following example:
umount /sys/fs/cgroup/pids
But note well: a cgroup filesystem is unmounted only if it is not busy,
that is, it has no child cgroups. If this is not the case, then the
only effect of the umount(8) is to make the mount invisible. Thus, to
ensure that the mount is really removed, one must first remove all child
cgroups, which in turn can be done only after all member processes have
been moved from those cgroups to the root cgroup.
Cgroups version 1 controllers
Each of the cgroups version 1 controllers is governed by a kernel con-
figuration option (listed below). Additionally, the availability of the
cgroups feature is governed by the CONFIG_CGROUPS kernel configuration
option.
cpu (since Linux 2.6.24; CONFIG_CGROUP_SCHED)
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. For further information, see Documenta-
tion/scheduler/sched-design-CFS.rst (or Documentation/sched-
uler/sched-design-CFS.txt in Linux 5.2 and earlier).
In Linux 3.2, this controller was extended to provide CPU "band-
width" control. If the kernel is configured with CON-
FIG_CFS_BANDWIDTH, then within each scheduling period (defined
via a file in the cgroup directory), it is possible to define an
upper limit on the CPU time allocated to the processes in a
cgroup. This upper limit applies even if there is no other com-
petition for the CPU. Further information can be found in the
kernel source file Documentation/scheduler/sched-bwc.rst (or Doc-
umentation/scheduler/sched-bwc.txt in Linux 5.2 and earlier).
cpuacct (since Linux 2.6.24; CONFIG_CGROUP_CPUACCT)
This provides accounting for CPU usage by groups of processes.
Further information can be found in the kernel source file Docu-
mentation/admin-guide/cgroup-v1/cpuacct.rst (or Documenta-
tion/cgroup-v1/cpuacct.txt in Linux 5.2 and earlier).
cpuset (since Linux 2.6.24; CONFIG_CPUSETS)
This cgroup can be used to bind the processes in a cgroup to a
specified set of CPUs and NUMA nodes.
Further information can be found in the kernel source file Docu-
mentation/admin-guide/cgroup-v1/cpusets.rst (or Documenta-
tion/cgroup-v1/cpusets.txt in Linux 5.2 and earlier).
memory (since Linux 2.6.25; CONFIG_MEMCG)
The memory controller supports reporting and limiting of process
memory, kernel memory, and swap used by cgroups.
Further information can be found in the kernel source file Docu-
mentation/admin-guide/cgroup-v1/memory.rst (or Documenta-
tion/cgroup-v1/memory.txt in Linux 5.2 and earlier).
devices (since Linux 2.6.26; CONFIG_CGROUP_DEVICE)
This supports controlling which processes may create (mknod) de-
vices as well as open them for reading or writing. The policies
may be specified as allow-lists and deny-lists. Hierarchy is en-
forced, so new rules must not violate existing rules for the tar-
get or ancestor cgroups.
Further information can be found in the kernel source file Docu-
mentation/admin-guide/cgroup-v1/devices.rst (or Documenta-
tion/cgroup-v1/devices.txt in Linux 5.2 and earlier).
freezer (since Linux 2.6.28; CONFIG_CGROUP_FREEZER)
The freezer cgroup can suspend and restore (resume) all processes
in a cgroup. Freezing a cgroup /A also causes its children, for
example, processes in /A/B, to be frozen.
Further information can be found in the kernel source file Docu-
mentation/admin-guide/cgroup-v1/freezer-subsystem.rst (or Docu-
mentation/cgroup-v1/freezer-subsystem.txt in Linux 5.2 and ear-
lier).
net_cls (since Linux 2.6.29; CONFIG_CGROUP_NET_CLASSID)
This places a classid, specified for the cgroup, on network pack-
ets created by a cgroup. These classids can then be used in
firewall rules, as well as used to shape traffic using tc(8).
This applies only to packets leaving the cgroup, not to traffic
arriving at the cgroup.
Further information can be found in the kernel source file Docu-
mentation/admin-guide/cgroup-v1/net_cls.rst (or Documenta-
tion/cgroup-v1/net_cls.txt in Linux 5.2 and earlier).
blkio (since Linux 2.6.33; CONFIG_BLK_CGROUP)
The blkio cgroup controls and limits access to specified block
devices by applying IO control in the form of throttling and up-
per limits against leaf nodes and intermediate nodes in the stor-
age hierarchy.
Two policies are available. The first is a proportional-weight
time-based division of disk implemented with CFQ. This is in ef-
fect for leaf nodes using CFQ. The second is a throttling policy
which specifies upper I/O rate limits on a device.
Further information can be found in the kernel source file Docu-
mentation/admin-guide/cgroup-v1/blkio-controller.rst (or Documen-
tation/cgroup-v1/blkio-controller.txt in Linux 5.2 and earlier).
perf_event (since Linux 2.6.39; CONFIG_CGROUP_PERF)
This controller allows perf monitoring of the set of processes
grouped in a cgroup.
Further information can be found in the kernel source files
net_prio (since Linux 3.3; CONFIG_CGROUP_NET_PRIO)
This allows priorities to be specified, per network interface,
for cgroups.
Further information can be found in the kernel source file Docu-
mentation/admin-guide/cgroup-v1/net_prio.rst (or Documenta-
tion/cgroup-v1/net_prio.txt in Linux 5.2 and earlier).
hugetlb (since Linux 3.5; CONFIG_CGROUP_HUGETLB)
This supports limiting the use of huge pages by cgroups.
Further information can be found in the kernel source file Docu-
mentation/admin-guide/cgroup-v1/hugetlb.rst (or Documenta-
tion/cgroup-v1/hugetlb.txt in Linux 5.2 and earlier).
pids (since Linux 4.3; CONFIG_CGROUP_PIDS)
This controller permits limiting the number of process that may
be created in a cgroup (and its descendants).
Further information can be found in the kernel source file Docu-
mentation/admin-guide/cgroup-v1/pids.rst (or Documenta-
tion/cgroup-v1/pids.txt in Linux 5.2 and earlier).
rdma (since Linux 4.11; CONFIG_CGROUP_RDMA)
The RDMA controller permits limiting the use of RDMA/IB-specific
resources per cgroup.
Further information can be found in the kernel source file Docu-
mentation/admin-guide/cgroup-v1/rdma.rst (or Documenta-
tion/cgroup-v1/rdma.txt in Linux 5.2 and earlier).
Creating cgroups and moving processes
A cgroup filesystem initially contains a single root cgroup, '/', which
all processes belong to. A new cgroup is created by creating a direc-
tory in the cgroup filesystem:
mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu/cg1
This creates a new empty cgroup.
A process may be moved to this cgroup by writing its PID into the
cgroup's cgroup.procs file:
echo $$ > /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu/cg1/cgroup.procs
Only one PID at a time should be written to this file.
Writing the value 0 to a cgroup.procs file causes the writing process to
be moved to the corresponding cgroup.
When writing a PID into the cgroup.procs, all threads in the process are
moved into the new cgroup at once.
Within a hierarchy, a process can be a member of exactly one cgroup.
Writing a process's PID to a cgroup.procs file automatically removes it
from the cgroup of which it was previously a member.
The cgroup.procs file can be read to obtain a list of the processes that
are members of a cgroup. The returned list of PIDs is not guaranteed to
be in order. Nor is it guaranteed to be free of duplicates. (For exam-
ple, a PID may be recycled while reading from the list.)
In cgroups v1, an individual thread can be moved to another cgroup by
writing its thread ID (i.e., the kernel thread ID returned by clone(2)
and gettid(2)) to the tasks file in a cgroup directory. This file can
be read to discover the set of threads that are members of the cgroup.
Removing cgroups
To remove a cgroup, it must first have no child cgroups and contain no
(nonzombie) processes. So long as that is the case, one can simply re-
move the corresponding directory pathname. Note that files in a cgroup
directory cannot and need not be removed.
Cgroups v1 release notification
Two files can be used to determine whether the kernel provides notifica-
tions when a cgroup becomes empty. A cgroup is considered to be empty
when it contains no child cgroups and no member processes.
A special file in the root directory of each cgroup hierarchy, re-
lease_agent, can be used to register the pathname of a program that may
be invoked when a cgroup in the hierarchy becomes empty. The pathname
of the newly empty cgroup (relative to the cgroup mount point) is pro-
vided as the sole command-line argument when the release_agent program
is invoked. The release_agent program might remove the cgroup direc-
tory, or perhaps repopulate it with a process.
The default value of the release_agent file is empty, meaning that no
release agent is invoked.
The content of the release_agent file can also be specified via a mount
option when the cgroup filesystem is mounted:
mount -o release_agent=pathname ...
Whether or not the release_agent program is invoked when a particular
cgroup becomes empty is determined by the value in the notify_on_release
file in the corresponding cgroup directory. If this file contains the
value 0, then the release_agent program is not invoked. If it contains
the value 1, the release_agent program is invoked. The default value
for this file in the root cgroup is 0. At the time when a new cgroup is
created, the value in this file is inherited from the corresponding file
in the parent cgroup.
Cgroup v1 named hierarchies
In cgroups v1, it is possible to mount a cgroup hierarchy that has no
attached controllers:
mount -t cgroup -o none,name=somename none /some/mount/point
Multiple instances of such hierarchies can be mounted; each hierarchy
must have a unique name. The only purpose of such hierarchies is to
track processes. (See the discussion of release notification below.)
An example of this is the name=systemd cgroup hierarchy that is used by
systemd(1) to track services and user sessions.
Since Linux 5.0, the cgroup_no_v1 kernel boot option (described below)
can be used to disable cgroup v1 named hierarchies, by specifying
cgroup_no_v1=named.
CGROUPS VERSION 2
In cgroups v2, all mounted controllers reside in a single unified hier-
archy. While (different) controllers may be simultaneously mounted un-
der the v1 and v2 hierarchies, it is not possible to mount the same con-
troller simultaneously under both the v1 and the v2 hierarchies.
The new behaviors in cgroups v2 are summarized here, and in some cases
elaborated in the following subsections.
• Cgroups v2 provides a unified hierarchy against which all controllers
are mounted.
• "Internal" processes are not permitted. With the exception of the
root cgroup, processes may reside only in leaf nodes (cgroups that do
not themselves contain child cgroups). The details are somewhat more
subtle than this, and are described below.
• Active cgroups must be specified via the files cgroup.controllers and
cgroup.subtree_control.
• The tasks file has been removed. In addition, the cgroup.clone_chil-
dren file that is employed by the cpuset controller has been removed.
• An improved mechanism for notification of empty cgroups is provided
by the cgroup.events file.
For more changes, see the Documentation/admin-guide/cgroup-v2.rst file
in the kernel source (or Documentation/cgroup-v2.txt in Linux 4.17 and
earlier).
Some of the new behaviors listed above saw subsequent modification with
the addition in Linux 4.14 of "thread mode" (described below).
Cgroups v2 unified hierarchy
In cgroups v1, the ability to mount different controllers against dif-
ferent hierarchies was intended to allow great flexibility for applica-
tion design. In practice, though, the flexibility turned out to be less
useful than expected, and in many cases added complexity. Therefore, in
cgroups v2, all available controllers are mounted against a single hier-
archy. The available controllers are automatically mounted, meaning
that it is not necessary (or possible) to specify the controllers when
mounting the cgroup v2 filesystem using a command such as the following:
mount -t cgroup2 none /mnt/cgroup2
A cgroup v2 controller is available only if it is not currently in use
via a mount against a cgroup v1 hierarchy. Or, to put things another
way, it is not possible to employ the same controller against both a v1
hierarchy and the unified v2 hierarchy. This means that it may be nec-
essary first to unmount a v1 controller (as described above) before that
controller is available in v2. Since systemd(1) makes heavy use of some
v1 controllers by default, it can in some cases be simpler to boot the
system with selected v1 controllers disabled. To do this, specify the
cgroup_no_v1=list option on the kernel boot command line; list is a
comma-separated list of the names of the controllers to disable, or the
word all to disable all v1 controllers. (This situation is correctly
handled by systemd(1), which falls back to operating without the speci-
fied controllers.)
Note that on many modern systems, systemd(1) automatically mounts the
cgroup2 filesystem at /sys/fs/cgroup/unified during the boot process.
Cgroups v2 mount options
The following options (mount -o) can be specified when mounting the
group v2 filesystem:
nsdelegate (since Linux 4.15)
Treat cgroup namespaces as delegation boundaries. For details,
see below.
memory_localevents (since Linux 5.2)
The memory.events should show statistics only for the cgroup it-
self, and not for any descendant cgroups. This was the behavior
before Linux 5.2. Starting in Linux 5.2, the default behavior is
to include statistics for descendant cgroups in memory.events,
and this mount option can be used to revert to the legacy behav-
ior. This option is system wide and can be set on mount or modi-
fied through remount only from the initial mount namespace; it is
silently ignored in noninitial namespaces.
Cgroups v2 controllers
The following controllers, documented in the kernel source file Documen-
tation/admin-guide/cgroup-v2.rst (or Documentation/cgroup-v2.txt in
Linux 4.17 and earlier), are supported in cgroups version 2:
cpu (since Linux 4.15)
This is the successor to the version 1 cpu and cpuacct con-
trollers.
cpuset (since Linux 5.0)
This is the successor of the version 1 cpuset controller.
freezer (since Linux 5.2)
This is the successor of the version 1 freezer controller.
hugetlb (since Linux 5.6)
This is the successor of the version 1 hugetlb controller.
io (since Linux 4.5)
This is the successor of the version 1 blkio controller.
memory (since Linux 4.5)
This is the successor of the version 1 memory controller.
perf_event (since Linux 4.11)
This is the same as the version 1 perf_event controller.
pids (since Linux 4.5)
This is the same as the version 1 pids controller.
rdma (since Linux 4.11)
This is the same as the version 1 rdma controller.
There is no direct equivalent of the net_cls and net_prio controllers
from cgroups version 1. Instead, support has been added to iptables(8)
to allow eBPF filters that hook on cgroup v2 pathnames to make decisions
about network traffic on a per-cgroup basis.
The v2 devices controller provides no interface files; instead, device
control is gated by attaching an eBPF (BPF_CGROUP_DEVICE) program to a
v2 cgroup.
Cgroups v2 subtree control
Each cgroup in the v2 hierarchy contains the following two files:
cgroup.controllers
This read-only file exposes a list of the controllers that are
available in this cgroup. The contents of this file match the
contents of the cgroup.subtree_control file in the parent cgroup.
cgroup.subtree_control
This is a list of controllers that are active (enabled) in the
cgroup. The set of controllers in this file is a subset of the
set in the cgroup.controllers of this cgroup. The set of active
controllers is modified by writing strings to this file contain-
ing space-delimited controller names, each preceded by '+' (to
enable a controller) or '-' (to disable a controller), as in the
following example:
echo '+pids -memory' > x/y/cgroup.subtree_control
An attempt to enable a controller that is not present in
cgroup.controllers leads to an ENOENT error when writing to the
cgroup.subtree_control file.
Because the list of controllers in cgroup.subtree_control is a subset of
those cgroup.controllers, a controller that has been disabled in one
cgroup in the hierarchy can never be re-enabled in the subtree below
that cgroup.
A cgroup's cgroup.subtree_control file determines the set of controllers
that are exercised in the child cgroups. When a controller (e.g., pids)
is present in the cgroup.subtree_control file of a parent cgroup, then
the corresponding controller-interface files (e.g., pids.max) are auto-
matically created in the children of that cgroup and can be used to ex-
ert resource control in the child cgroups.
Cgroups v2 "no internal processes" rule
Cgroups v2 enforces a so-called "no internal processes" rule. Roughly
speaking, this rule means that, with the exception of the root cgroup,
processes may reside only in leaf nodes (cgroups that do not themselves
contain child cgroups). This avoids the need to decide how to partition
resources between processes which are members of cgroup A and processes
in child cgroups of A.
For instance, if cgroup /cg1/cg2 exists, then a process may reside in
/cg1/cg2, but not in /cg1. This is to avoid an ambiguity in cgroups v1
with respect to the delegation of resources between processes in /cg1
and its child cgroups. The recommended approach in cgroups v2 is to
create a subdirectory called leaf for any nonleaf cgroup which should
contain processes, but no child cgroups. Thus, processes which previ-
ously would have gone into /cg1 would now go into /cg1/leaf. This has
the advantage of making explicit the relationship between processes in
/cg1/leaf and /cg1's other children.
The "no internal processes" rule is in fact more subtle than stated
above. More precisely, the rule is that a (nonroot) cgroup can't both
(1) have member processes, and (2) distribute resources into child
cgroups—that is, have a nonempty cgroup.subtree_control file. Thus, it
is possible for a cgroup to have both member processes and child
cgroups, but before controllers can be enabled for that cgroup, the mem-
ber processes must be moved out of the cgroup (e.g., perhaps into the
child cgroups).
With the Linux 4.14 addition of "thread mode" (described below), the "no
internal processes" rule has been relaxed in some cases.
Cgroups v2 cgroup.events file
Each nonroot cgroup in the v2 hierarchy contains a read-only file,
cgroup.events, whose contents are key-value pairs (delimited by newline
characters, with the key and value separated by spaces) providing state
information about the cgroup:
$ cat mygrp/cgroup.events
populated 1
frozen 0
The following keys may appear in this file:
populated
The value of this key is either 1, if this cgroup or any of its
descendants has member processes, or otherwise 0.
frozen (since Linux 5.2)
The value of this key is 1 if this cgroup is currently frozen, or
0 if it is not.
The cgroup.events file can be monitored, in order to receive notifica-
tion when the value of one of its keys changes. Such monitoring can be
done using inotify(7), which notifies changes as IN_MODIFY events, or
poll(2), which notifies changes by returning the POLLPRI and POLLERR
bits in the revents field.
Cgroup v2 release notification
Cgroups v2 provides a new mechanism for obtaining notification when a
cgroup becomes empty. The cgroups v1 release_agent and notify_on_re-
lease files are removed, and replaced by the populated key in the
cgroup.events file. This key either has the value 0, meaning that the
cgroup (and its descendants) contain no (nonzombie) member processes, or
1, meaning that the cgroup (or one of its descendants) contains member
processes.
The cgroups v2 release-notification mechanism offers the following ad-
vantages over the cgroups v1 release_agent mechanism:
• It allows for cheaper notification, since a single process can moni-
tor multiple cgroup.events files (using the techniques described ear-
lier). By contrast, the cgroups v1 mechanism requires the expense of
creating a process for each notification.
• Notification for different cgroup subhierarchies can be delegated to
different processes. By contrast, the cgroups v1 mechanism allows
only one release agent for an entire hierarchy.
Cgroups v2 cgroup.stat file
Each cgroup in the v2 hierarchy contains a read-only cgroup.stat file
(first introduced in Linux 4.14) that consists of lines containing key-
value pairs. The following keys currently appear in this file:
nr_descendants
This is the total number of visible (i.e., living) descendant
cgroups underneath this cgroup.
nr_dying_descendants
This is the total number of dying descendant cgroups underneath
this cgroup. A cgroup enters the dying state after being
deleted. It remains in that state for an undefined period (which
will depend on system load) while resources are freed before the
cgroup is destroyed. Note that the presence of some cgroups in
the dying state is normal, and is not indicative of any problem.
A process can't be made a member of a dying cgroup, and a dying
cgroup can't be brought back to life.
Limiting the number of descendant cgroups
Each cgroup in the v2 hierarchy contains the following files, which can
be used to view and set limits on the number of descendant cgroups under
that cgroup:
cgroup.max.depth (since Linux 4.14)
This file defines a limit on the depth of nesting of descendant
cgroups. A value of 0 in this file means that no descendant
cgroups can be created. An attempt to create a descendant whose
nesting level exceeds the limit fails (mkdir(2) fails with the
error EAGAIN).
Writing the string "max" to this file means that no limit is im-
posed. The default value in this file is "max".
cgroup.max.descendants (since Linux 4.14)
This file defines a limit on the number of live descendant
cgroups that this cgroup may have. An attempt to create more de-
scendants than allowed by the limit fails (mkdir(2) fails with
the error EAGAIN).
Writing the string "max" to this file means that no limit is im-
posed. The default value in this file is "max".
CGROUPS DELEGATION: DELEGATING A HIERARCHY TO A LESS PRIVILEGED USER
In the context of cgroups, delegation means passing management of some
subtree of the cgroup hierarchy to a nonprivileged user. Cgroups v1
provides support for delegation based on file permissions in the cgroup
hierarchy but with less strict containment rules than v2 (as noted be-
low). Cgroups v2 supports delegation with containment by explicit de-
sign. The focus of the discussion in this section is on delegation in
cgroups v2, with some differences for cgroups v1 noted along the way.
Some terminology is required in order to describe delegation. A dele-
gater is a privileged user (i.e., root) who owns a parent cgroup. A
delegatee is a nonprivileged user who will be granted the permissions
needed to manage some subhierarchy under that parent cgroup, known as
the delegated subtree.
To perform delegation, the delegater makes certain directories and files
writable by the delegatee, typically by changing the ownership of the
objects to be the user ID of the delegatee. Assuming that we want to
delegate the hierarchy rooted at (say) /dlgt_grp and that there are not
yet any child cgroups under that cgroup, the ownership of the following
is changed to the user ID of the delegatee:
/dlgt_grp
Changing the ownership of the root of the subtree means that any
new cgroups created under the subtree (and the files they con-
tain) will also be owned by the delegatee.
/dlgt_grp/cgroup.procs
Changing the ownership of this file means that the delegatee can
move processes into the root of the delegated subtree.
/dlgt_grp/cgroup.subtree_control (cgroups v2 only)
Changing the ownership of this file means that the delegatee can
enable controllers (that are present in /dlgt_grp/cgroup.con-
trollers) in order to further redistribute resources at lower
levels in the subtree. (As an alternative to changing the owner-
ship of this file, the delegater might instead add selected con-
trollers to this file.)
/dlgt_grp/cgroup.threads (cgroups v2 only)
Changing the ownership of this file is necessary if a threaded
subtree is being delegated (see the description of "thread mode",
below). This permits the delegatee to write thread IDs to the
file. (The ownership of this file can also be changed when dele-
gating a domain subtree, but currently this serves no purpose,
since, as described below, it is not possible to move a thread
between domain cgroups by writing its thread ID to the
cgroup.threads file.)
In cgroups v1, the corresponding file that should instead be del-
egated is the tasks file.
The delegater should not change the ownership of any of the controller
interfaces files (e.g., pids.max, memory.high) in dlgt_grp. Those files
are used from the next level above the delegated subtree in order to
distribute resources into the subtree, and the delegatee should not have
permission to change the resources that are distributed into the dele-
gated subtree.
See also the discussion of the /sys/kernel/cgroup/delegate file in NOTES
for information about further delegatable files in cgroups v2.
After the aforementioned steps have been performed, the delegatee can
create child cgroups within the delegated subtree (the cgroup subdirec-
tories and the files they contain will be owned by the delegatee) and
move processes between cgroups in the subtree. If some controllers are
present in dlgt_grp/cgroup.subtree_control, or the ownership of that
file was passed to the delegatee, the delegatee can also control the
further redistribution of the corresponding resources into the delegated
subtree.
Cgroups v2 delegation: nsdelegate and cgroup namespaces
Starting with Linux 4.13, there is a second way to perform cgroup dele-
gation in the cgroups v2 hierarchy. This is done by mounting or re-
mounting the cgroup v2 filesystem with the nsdelegate mount option. For
example, if the cgroup v2 filesystem has already been mounted, we can
remount it with the nsdelegate option as follows:
mount -t cgroup2 -o remount,nsdelegate \
none /sys/fs/cgroup/unified
The effect of this mount option is to cause cgroup namespaces to auto-
matically become delegation boundaries. More specifically, the follow-
ing restrictions apply for processes inside the cgroup namespace:
• Writes to controller interface files in the root directory of the
namespace will fail with the error EPERM. Processes inside the
cgroup namespace can still write to delegatable files in the root di-
rectory of the cgroup namespace such as cgroup.procs and cgroup.sub-
tree_control, and can create subhierarchy underneath the root direc-
tory.
• Attempts to migrate processes across the namespace boundary are de-
nied (with the error ENOENT). Processes inside the cgroup namespace
can still (subject to the containment rules described below) move
processes between cgroups within the subhierarchy under the namespace
root.
The ability to define cgroup namespaces as delegation boundaries makes
cgroup namespaces more useful. To understand why, suppose that we al-
ready have one cgroup hierarchy that has been delegated to a nonprivi-
leged user, cecilia, using the older delegation technique described
above. Suppose further that cecilia wanted to further delegate a sub-
hierarchy under the existing delegated hierarchy. (For example, the
delegated hierarchy might be associated with an unprivileged container
run by cecilia.) Even if a cgroup namespace was employed, because both
hierarchies are owned by the unprivileged user cecilia, the following
illegitimate actions could be performed:
• A process in the inferior hierarchy could change the resource con-
troller settings in the root directory of that hierarchy. (These re-
source controller settings are intended to allow control to be exer-
cised from the parent cgroup; a process inside the child cgroup
should not be allowed to modify them.)
• A process inside the inferior hierarchy could move processes into and
out of the inferior hierarchy if the cgroups in the superior hierar-
chy were somehow visible.
Employing the nsdelegate mount option prevents both of these possibili-
ties.
The nsdelegate mount option only has an effect when performed in the
initial mount namespace; in other mount namespaces, the option is
silently ignored.
Note: On some systems, systemd(1) automatically mounts the cgroup v2
filesystem. In order to experiment with the nsdelegate operation, it
may be useful to boot the kernel with the following command-line op-
tions:
cgroup_no_v1=all systemd.legacy_systemd_cgroup_controller
These options cause the kernel to boot with the cgroups v1 controllers
disabled (meaning that the controllers are available in the v2 hierar-
chy), and tells systemd(1) not to mount and use the cgroup v2 hierarchy,
so that the v2 hierarchy can be manually mounted with the desired op-
tions after boot-up.
Cgroup delegation containment rules
Some delegation containment rules ensure that the delegatee can move
processes between cgroups within the delegated subtree, but can't move
processes from outside the delegated subtree into the subtree or vice
versa. A nonprivileged process (i.e., the delegatee) can write the PID
of a "target" process into a cgroup.procs file only if all of the fol-
lowing are true:
• The writer has write permission on the cgroup.procs file in the des-
tination cgroup.
• The writer has write permission on the cgroup.procs file in the near-
est common ancestor of the source and destination cgroups. Note that
in some cases, the nearest common ancestor may be the source or des-
tination cgroup itself. This requirement is not enforced for cgroups
v1 hierarchies, with the consequence that containment in v1 is less
strict than in v2. (For example, in cgroups v1 the user that owns
two distinct delegated subhierarchies can move a process between the
hierarchies.)
• If the cgroup v2 filesystem was mounted with the nsdelegate option,
the writer must be able to see the source and destination cgroups
from its cgroup namespace.
• In cgroups v1: the effective UID of the writer (i.e., the delegatee)
matches the real user ID or the saved set-user-ID of the target
process. Before Linux 4.11, this requirement also applied in cgroups
v2 (This was a historical requirement inherited from cgroups v1 that
was later deemed unnecessary, since the other rules suffice for con-
tainment in cgroups v2.)
Note: one consequence of these delegation containment rules is that the
unprivileged delegatee can't place the first process into the delegated
subtree; instead, the delegater must place the first process (a process
owned by the delegatee) into the delegated subtree.
CGROUPS VERSION 2 THREAD MODE
Among the restrictions imposed by cgroups v2 that were not present in
cgroups v1 are the following:
• No thread-granularity control: all of the threads of a process must
be in the same cgroup.
• No internal processes: a cgroup can't both have member processes and
exercise controllers on child cgroups.
Both of these restrictions were added because the lack of these restric-
tions had caused problems in cgroups v1. In particular, the cgroups v1
ability to allow thread-level granularity for cgroup membership made no
sense for some controllers. (A notable example was the memory con-
troller: since threads share an address space, it made no sense to split
threads across different memory cgroups.)
Notwithstanding the initial design decision in cgroups v2, there were
use cases for certain controllers, notably the cpu controller, for which
thread-level granularity of control was meaningful and useful. To ac-
commodate such use cases, Linux 4.14 added thread mode for cgroups v2.
Thread mode allows the following:
• The creation of threaded subtrees in which the threads of a process
may be spread across cgroups inside the tree. (A threaded subtree
may contain multiple multithreaded processes.)
• The concept of threaded controllers, which can distribute resources
across the cgroups in a threaded subtree.
• A relaxation of the "no internal processes rule", so that, within a
threaded subtree, a cgroup can both contain member threads and exer-
cise resource control over child cgroups.
With the addition of thread mode, each nonroot cgroup now contains a new
file, cgroup.type, that exposes, and in some circumstances can be used
to change, the "type" of a cgroup. This file contains one of the fol-
lowing type values:
domain This is a normal v2 cgroup that provides process-granularity con-
trol. If a process is a member of this cgroup, then all threads
of the process are (by definition) in the same cgroup. This is
the default cgroup type, and provides the same behavior that was
provided for cgroups in the initial cgroups v2 implementation.
threaded
This cgroup is a member of a threaded subtree. Threads can be
added to this cgroup, and controllers can be enabled for the
cgroup.
domain threaded
This is a domain cgroup that serves as the root of a threaded
subtree. This cgroup type is also known as "threaded root".
domain invalid
This is a cgroup inside a threaded subtree that is in an "in-
valid" state. Processes can't be added to the cgroup, and con-
trollers can't be enabled for the cgroup. The only thing that
can be done with this cgroup (other than deleting it) is to con-
vert it to a threaded cgroup by writing the string "threaded" to
the cgroup.type file.
The rationale for the existence of this "interim" type during the
creation of a threaded subtree (rather than the kernel simply im-
mediately converting all cgroups under the threaded root to the
type threaded) is to allow for possible future extensions to the
thread mode model
Threaded versus domain controllers
With the addition of threads mode, cgroups v2 now distinguishes two
types of resource controllers:
• Threaded controllers: these controllers support thread-granularity
for resource control and can be enabled inside threaded subtrees,
with the result that the corresponding controller-interface files ap-
pear inside the cgroups in the threaded subtree. As at Linux 4.19,
the following controllers are threaded: cpu, perf_event, and pids.
• Domain controllers: these controllers support only process granular-
ity for resource control. From the perspective of a domain con-
troller, all threads of a process are always in the same cgroup. Do-
main controllers can't be enabled inside a threaded subtree.
Creating a threaded subtree
There are two pathways that lead to the creation of a threaded subtree.
The first pathway proceeds as follows:
(1) We write the string "threaded" to the cgroup.type file of a cgroup
y/z that currently has the type domain. This has the following ef-
fects:
• The type of the cgroup y/z becomes threaded.
• The type of the parent cgroup, y, becomes domain threaded. The
parent cgroup is the root of a threaded subtree (also known as
the "threaded root").
• All other cgroups under y that were not already of type threaded
(because they were inside already existing threaded subtrees un-
der the new threaded root) are converted to type domain invalid.
Any subsequently created cgroups under y will also have the type
domain invalid.
(2) We write the string "threaded" to each of the domain invalid
cgroups under y, in order to convert them to the type threaded. As
a consequence of this step, all threads under the threaded root now
have the type threaded and the threaded subtree is now fully us-
able. The requirement to write "threaded" to each of these cgroups
is somewhat cumbersome, but allows for possible future extensions
to the thread-mode model.
The second way of creating a threaded subtree is as follows:
(1) In an existing cgroup, z, that currently has the type domain, we
(1.1) enable one or more threaded controllers and (1.2) make a
process a member of z. (These two steps can be done in either or-
der.) This has the following consequences:
• The type of z becomes domain threaded.
• All of the descendant cgroups of z that were not already of type
threaded are converted to type domain invalid.
(2) As before, we make the threaded subtree usable by writing the
string "threaded" to each of the domain invalid cgroups under z, in
order to convert them to the type threaded.
One of the consequences of the above pathways to creating a threaded
subtree is that the threaded root cgroup can be a parent only to
threaded (and domain invalid) cgroups. The threaded root cgroup can't
be a parent of a domain cgroups, and a threaded cgroup can't have a sib-
ling that is a domain cgroup.
Using a threaded subtree
Within a threaded subtree, threaded controllers can be enabled in each
subgroup whose type has been changed to threaded; upon doing so, the
corresponding controller interface files appear in the children of that
cgroup.
A process can be moved into a threaded subtree by writing its PID to the
cgroup.procs file in one of the cgroups inside the tree. This has the
effect of making all of the threads in the process members of the corre-
sponding cgroup and makes the process a member of the threaded subtree.
The threads of the process can then be spread across the threaded sub-
tree by writing their thread IDs (see gettid(2)) to the cgroup.threads
files in different cgroups inside the subtree. The threads of a process
must all reside in the same threaded subtree.
As with writing to cgroup.procs, some containment rules apply when writ-
ing to the cgroup.threads file:
• The writer must have write permission on the cgroup.threads file in
the destination cgroup.
• The writer must have write permission on the cgroup.procs file in the
common ancestor of the source and destination cgroups. (In some
cases, the common ancestor may be the source or destination cgroup
itself.)
• The source and destination cgroups must be in the same threaded sub-
tree. (Outside a threaded subtree, an attempt to move a thread by
writing its thread ID to the cgroup.threads file in a different do-
main cgroup fails with the error EOPNOTSUPP.)
The cgroup.threads file is present in each cgroup (including domain
cgroups) and can be read in order to discover the set of threads that is
present in the cgroup. The set of thread IDs obtained when reading this
file is not guaranteed to be ordered or free of duplicates.
The cgroup.procs file in the threaded root shows the PIDs of all
processes that are members of the threaded subtree. The cgroup.procs
files in the other cgroups in the subtree are not readable.
Domain controllers can't be enabled in a threaded subtree; no con-
troller-interface files appear inside the cgroups underneath the
threaded root. From the point of view of a domain controller, threaded
subtrees are invisible: a multithreaded process inside a threaded sub-
tree appears to a domain controller as a process that resides in the
threaded root cgroup.
Within a threaded subtree, the "no internal processes" rule does not ap-
ply: a cgroup can both contain member processes (or thread) and exercise
controllers on child cgroups.
Rules for writing to cgroup.type and creating threaded subtrees
A number of rules apply when writing to the cgroup.type file:
• Only the string "threaded" may be written. In other words, the only
explicit transition that is possible is to convert a domain cgroup to
type threaded.
• The effect of writing "threaded" depends on the current value in
cgroup.type, as follows:
• domain or domain threaded: start the creation of a threaded sub-
tree (whose root is the parent of this cgroup) via the first of
the pathways described above;
• domain invalid: convert this cgroup (which is inside a threaded
subtree) to a usable (i.e., threaded) state;
• threaded: no effect (a "no-op").
• We can't write to a cgroup.type file if the parent's type is domain
invalid. In other words, the cgroups of a threaded subtree must be
converted to the threaded state in a top-down manner.
There are also some constraints that must be satisfied in order to cre-
ate a threaded subtree rooted at the cgroup x:
• There can be no member processes in the descendant cgroups of x.
(The cgroup x can itself have member processes.)
• No domain controllers may be enabled in x's cgroup.subtree_control
file.
If any of the above constraints is violated, then an attempt to write
"threaded" to a cgroup.type file fails with the error ENOTSUP.
The "domain threaded" cgroup type
According to the pathways described above, the type of a cgroup can
change to domain threaded in either of the following cases:
• The string "threaded" is written to a child cgroup.
• A threaded controller is enabled inside the cgroup and a process is
made a member of the cgroup.
A domain threaded cgroup, x, can revert to the type domain if the above
conditions no longer hold true—that is, if all threaded child cgroups of
x are removed and either x no longer has threaded controllers enabled or
no longer has member processes.
When a domain threaded cgroup x reverts to the type domain:
• All domain invalid descendants of x that are not in lower-level
threaded subtrees revert to the type domain.
• The root cgroups in any lower-level threaded subtrees revert to the
type domain threaded.
Exceptions for the root cgroup
The root cgroup of the v2 hierarchy is treated exceptionally: it can be
the parent of both domain and threaded cgroups. If the string
"threaded" is written to the cgroup.type file of one of the children of
the root cgroup, then
• The type of that cgroup becomes threaded.
• The type of any descendants of that cgroup that are not part of
lower-level threaded subtrees changes to domain invalid.
Note that in this case, there is no cgroup whose type becomes domain
threaded. (Notionally, the root cgroup can be considered as the
threaded root for the cgroup whose type was changed to threaded.)
The aim of this exceptional treatment for the root cgroup is to allow a
threaded cgroup that employs the cpu controller to be placed as high as
possible in the hierarchy, so as to minimize the (small) cost of tra-
versing the cgroup hierarchy.
The cgroups v2 "cpu" controller and realtime threads
As at Linux 4.19, the cgroups v2 cpu controller does not support control
of realtime threads (specifically threads scheduled under any of the
policies SCHED_FIFO, SCHED_RR, described SCHED_DEADLINE; see sched(7)).
Therefore, the cpu controller can be enabled in the root cgroup only if
all realtime threads are in the root cgroup. (If there are realtime
threads in nonroot cgroups, then a write(2) of the string "+cpu" to the
cgroup.subtree_control file fails with the error EINVAL.)
On some systems, systemd(1) places certain realtime threads in nonroot
cgroups in the v2 hierarchy. On such systems, these threads must first
be moved to the root cgroup before the cpu controller can be enabled.
ERRORS
The following errors can occur for mount(2):
EBUSY An attempt to mount a cgroup version 1 filesystem specified nei-
ther the name= option (to mount a named hierarchy) nor a con-
troller name (or all).
NOTES
A child process created via fork(2) inherits its parent's cgroup member-
ships. A process's cgroup memberships are preserved across execve(2).
The clone3(2) CLONE_INTO_CGROUP flag can be used to create a child
process that begins its life in a different version 2 cgroup from the
parent process.
/proc files
/proc/cgroups (since Linux 2.6.24)
This file contains information about the controllers that are
compiled into the kernel. An example of the contents of this
file (reformatted for readability) is the following:
#subsys_name hierarchy num_cgroups enabled
cpuset 4 1 1
cpu 8 1 1
cpuacct 8 1 1
blkio 6 1 1
memory 3 1 1
devices 10 84 1
freezer 7 1 1
net_cls 9 1 1
perf_event 5 1 1
net_prio 9 1 1
hugetlb 0 1 0
pids 2 1 1
The fields in this file are, from left to right:
[1] The name of the controller.
[2] The unique ID of the cgroup hierarchy on which this con-
troller is mounted. If multiple cgroups v1 controllers are
bound to the same hierarchy, then each will show the same
hierarchy ID in this field. The value in this field will be
0 if:
• the controller is not mounted on a cgroups v1 hierarchy;
• the controller is bound to the cgroups v2 single unified
hierarchy; or
• the controller is disabled (see below).
[3] The number of control groups in this hierarchy using this
controller.
[4] This field contains the value 1 if this controller is en-
abled, or 0 if it has been disabled (via the cgroup_disable
kernel command-line boot parameter).
/proc/pid/cgroup (since Linux 2.6.24)
This file describes control groups to which the process with the
corresponding PID belongs. The displayed information differs for
cgroups version 1 and version 2 hierarchies.
For each cgroup hierarchy of which the process is a member, there
is one entry containing three colon-separated fields:
hierarchy-ID:controller-list:cgroup-path
For example:
5:cpuacct,cpu,cpuset:/daemons
The colon-separated fields are, from left to right:
[1] For cgroups version 1 hierarchies, this field contains a
unique hierarchy ID number that can be matched to a hierar-
chy ID in /proc/cgroups. For the cgroups version 2 hierar-
chy, this field contains the value 0.
[2] For cgroups version 1 hierarchies, this field contains a
comma-separated list of the controllers bound to the hierar-
chy. For the cgroups version 2 hierarchy, this field is
empty.
[3] This field contains the pathname of the control group in the
hierarchy to which the process belongs. This pathname is
relative to the mount point of the hierarchy.
/sys/kernel/cgroup files
/sys/kernel/cgroup/delegate (since Linux 4.15)
This file exports a list of the cgroups v2 files (one per line)
that are delegatable (i.e., whose ownership should be changed to
the user ID of the delegatee). In the future, the set of dele-
gatable files may change or grow, and this file provides a way
for the kernel to inform user-space applications of which files
must be delegated. As at Linux 4.15, one sees the following when
inspecting this file:
$ cat /sys/kernel/cgroup/delegate
cgroup.procs
cgroup.subtree_control
cgroup.threads
/sys/kernel/cgroup/features (since Linux 4.15)
Over time, the set of cgroups v2 features that are provided by
the kernel may change or grow, or some features may not be en-
abled by default. This file provides a way for user-space appli-
cations to discover what features the running kernel supports and
has enabled. Features are listed one per line:
$ cat /sys/kernel/cgroup/features
nsdelegate
memory_localevents
The entries that can appear in this file are:
memory_localevents (since Linux 5.2)
The kernel supports the memory_localevents mount option.
nsdelegate (since Linux 4.15)
The kernel supports the nsdelegate mount option.
memory_recursiveprot (since Linux 5.7)
The kernel supports the memory_recursiveprot mount option.
SEE ALSO
prlimit(1), systemd(1), systemd-cgls(1), systemd-cgtop(1), clone(2), io-
prio_set(2), perf_event_open(2), setrlimit(2), cgroup_namespaces(7),
cpuset(7), namespaces(7), sched(7), user_namespaces(7)
The kernel source file Documentation/admin-guide/cgroup-v2.rst.
Linux man-pages 6.9.1 2024-06-15 cgroups(7)
Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Tue Dec 16 04:08:02 CET 2025.