1The cgroup freezer is useful to batch job management system which start
   2and stop sets of tasks in order to schedule the resources of a machine
   3according to the desires of a system administrator. This sort of program
   4is often used on HPC clusters to schedule access to the cluster as a
   5whole. The cgroup freezer uses cgroups to describe the set of tasks to
   6be started/stopped by the batch job management system. It also provides
   7a means to start and stop the tasks composing the job.
   9The cgroup freezer will also be useful for checkpointing running groups
  10of tasks. The freezer allows the checkpoint code to obtain a consistent
  11image of the tasks by attempting to force the tasks in a cgroup into a
  12quiescent state. Once the tasks are quiescent another task can
  13walk /proc or invoke a kernel interface to gather information about the
  14quiesced tasks. Checkpointed tasks can be restarted later should a
  15recoverable error occur. This also allows the checkpointed tasks to be
  16migrated between nodes in a cluster by copying the gathered information
  17to another node and restarting the tasks there.
  19Sequences of SIGSTOP and SIGCONT are not always sufficient for stopping
  20and resuming tasks in userspace. Both of these signals are observable
  21from within the tasks we wish to freeze. While SIGSTOP cannot be caught,
  22blocked, or ignored it can be seen by waiting or ptracing parent tasks.
  23SIGCONT is especially unsuitable since it can be caught by the task. Any
  24programs designed to watch for SIGSTOP and SIGCONT could be broken by
  25attempting to use SIGSTOP and SIGCONT to stop and resume tasks. We can
  26demonstrate this problem using nested bash shells:
  28        $ echo $$
  29        16644
  30        $ bash
  31        $ echo $$
  32        16690
  34        From a second, unrelated bash shell:
  35        $ kill -SIGSTOP 16690
  36        $ kill -SIGCONT 16690
  38        <at this point 16690 exits and causes 16644 to exit too>
  40This happens because bash can observe both signals and choose how it
  41responds to them.
  43Another example of a program which catches and responds to these
  44signals is gdb. In fact any program designed to use ptrace is likely to
  45have a problem with this method of stopping and resuming tasks.
  47In contrast, the cgroup freezer uses the kernel freezer code to
  48prevent the freeze/unfreeze cycle from becoming visible to the tasks
  49being frozen. This allows the bash example above and gdb to run as
  52The freezer subsystem in the container filesystem defines a file named
  53freezer.state. Writing "FROZEN" to the state file will freeze all tasks in the
  54cgroup. Subsequently writing "THAWED" will unfreeze the tasks in the cgroup.
  55Reading will return the current state.
  57Note freezer.state doesn't exist in root cgroup, which means root cgroup
  58is non-freezable.
  60* Examples of usage :
  62   # mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer
  63   # mount -t cgroup -ofreezer freezer /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer
  64   # mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/0
  65   # echo $some_pid > /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/0/tasks
  67to get status of the freezer subsystem :
  69   # cat /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/0/freezer.state
  70   THAWED
  72to freeze all tasks in the container :
  74   # echo FROZEN > /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/0/freezer.state
  75   # cat /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/0/freezer.state
  77   # cat /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/0/freezer.state
  78   FROZEN
  80to unfreeze all tasks in the container :
  82   # echo THAWED > /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/0/freezer.state
  83   # cat /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer/0/freezer.state
  84   THAWED
  86This is the basic mechanism which should do the right thing for user space task
  87in a simple scenario.
  89It's important to note that freezing can be incomplete. In that case we return
  90EBUSY. This means that some tasks in the cgroup are busy doing something that
  91prevents us from completely freezing the cgroup at this time. After EBUSY,
  92the cgroup will remain partially frozen -- reflected by freezer.state reporting
  93"FREEZING" when read. The state will remain "FREEZING" until one of these
  94things happens:
  96        1) Userspace cancels the freezing operation by writing "THAWED" to
  97                the freezer.state file
  98        2) Userspace retries the freezing operation by writing "FROZEN" to
  99                the freezer.state file (writing "FREEZING" is not legal
 100                and returns EINVAL)
 101        3) The tasks that blocked the cgroup from entering the "FROZEN"
 102                state disappear from the cgroup's set of tasks.