Re: [PATCH v6 5/6] cgroup/cpuset: Update description of cpuset.cpus.partition in cgroup-v2.rst

[Waiman Long]

On 8/24/21 3:04 PM, Tejun Heo wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On Tue, Aug 24, 2021 at 01:35:33AM -0400, Waiman Long wrote:
> > Sorry for the late reply as I was on vacation last week.
> No worries. Hope you enjoyed the vacation. :)
>
> > > All the above ultimately says is that "a new task cannot be moved to a
> > > partition root with no effective cpu", but I don't understand why this would
> > > be a separate rule. Shouldn't the partition just stop being a partition when
> > > it doesn't have any exclusive cpu? What's the benefit of having multiple its
> > > own failure mode?
> > A partition with 0 cpu can be considered as a special partition type for
> > spawning child partitions. This can be temporary as the cpus will be given
> > back when a child partition is destroyed.
> But it can also happen by cpus going offline while the partition is
> populated, right? Am I correct in thinking that a partition without cpu is
> valid if its subtree contains cpus and invalid otherwise? If that's the
> case, it looks like the rules can be made significantly simpler. The parent
> cgroups never have processes anyway, so a partition is valid if its subtree
> contains cpus, invalid otherwise.
Yes, that is true. Thanks for the simplification.
> > > So, I think this definitely is a step in the right direction but still seems
> > > to be neither here or there. Before, we pretended that we could police the
> > > input when we couldn't. Now, we're changing the interface so that it
> > > includes configuration failures as an integral part; however, we're still
> > > policing some particular inputs while letting other inputs pass through and
> > > trigger failures and why one is handled one way while the other differently
> > > seems rather arbitrary.
> > The cpu_exclusive and load_balance flags are attributes associated directly
> > with the partition type. They are not affected by cpu availability or
> > changing of cpu list. That is why they are kept even when the partition
> > become invalid. If we have to remove them, it will be equivalent to changing
> > partition back to member and we may not need an invalid partition type at
> > all. Also, we will not be able to revert back to partition again when the
> > cpus becomes available.
> Oh, yeah, I'm not saying to lose those states. What I'm trying to say is
> that the rules and failure modes seem a lot more complicated than they need
> to be. If the configuration becomes invalid for whatever reason, transition
> the partition into invalid state and report why. If the situation resolves
> for whatever reason, transition it back to valid state. Shouldn't that work?

I agree that the current description is probably more complicated than 
it should be. I will try to fix that.

Thanks,
Longman