[Mageia-dev] cgroup on the desktop

Wed Mar 21 17:32:18 CET 2012

On Wed, 2012-03-21 at 16:24 +0000, Colin Guthrie wrote:
+> '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
+> 
+
+Thanks Col - very informative and helpful!
+
+Cheers,
+Robert
+
+
+