[Mageia-dev] cgroup on the desktop

Wed Mar 21 17:24:03 CET 2012

'Twas brillig, and Robert Fox at 20/03/12 08:13 did gyre and gimble:
+> Tried to research it, but it look more like it is for servers than
+> desktop.  Could someone explain what the value-add is of using this on
+> the desktop?
+
+As used in the context of systemd just a general mechanism for tracking
+processes. In the olden days, a service could exec other binaries quite
+happily. Killing the primary pid of the service meant that any other
+binaries launched were not necessarily killed. This mean that the
+service needed to implement it's own accounting and tracking system and
+there was no way to properly track to what service a given processes
+belongs.
+
+Now with cgroups, it's possible to fully track all the processes started
+by a given service and kill each of them properly when stopping the service.
+
+In addition it's also possible to identify to which service a given
+process belongs. e.g. if something is spinning out of control you can
+see it in top and then trace it back to the service itself.
+
+There are numerous other things that can be done with cgroups such as
+imposing various limits on a given service (and any subsequent processes
+it spawns).
+
+
+Overall this is an accounting mechanism that is something very much
+baked into systemd. It's an integral part of it. It's not something we
+could simply "turn off" on desktops vs. servers.
+
+
+However, this isn't really the right place to discuss this topic.
+
+Col
+
+
+
+
+-- 
+
+Colin Guthrie
+colin(at)mageia.org
+http://colin.guthr.ie/
+
+Day Job:
+  Tribalogic Limited http://www.tribalogic.net/
+Open Source:
+  Mageia Contributor http://www.mageia.org/
+  PulseAudio Hacker http://www.pulseaudio.org/
+  Trac Hacker http://trac.edgewall.org/
+