Cpusets is a Linux kernel facility and a subset of cgroups-v1, that provides a mechanism to assign a set of CPUs and NUMA memory nodes (if NUMA is available) to a set of tasks. This means in effect, that the tasks are constrained to the assigned cpusets. For a detailed documentation of cpusets, please refer to the CPUSETS kernel doc.
The following kernel configuration Parameter are required to enable cpusets:
To handle the cpusets in userspace, the functionality is available in sysfs: “/sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset/”. Each cpuset is represented by a directory in the cgroup file system containing (on top of the standard cgroup files) the following files describing that cpuset:
In addition, the root cpuset only has the following file:
The following bash commands show exemplary how cpusets can be used for realtime processes on a 4 CPU machine. To simplify the use of cpusets the Python tool cset can be used.
$ mkdir /dev/cpuset/rt0 $ echo 0 > /dev/cpuset/rt0/cpus $ echo 0 > /dev/cpuset/rt0/mems $ echo 1 > /dev/cpuset/rt0/cpu_exclusive $ echo $RT_PROC_PID > /dev/cpuset/rt0/tasks $ mkdir /dev/cpuset/system $ echo 1-3 > /dev/cpuset/system/cpus $ echo 0 > /dev/cpuset/system/mems $ echo 1 > /dev/cpuset/system/cpu_exclusive $ for pid in $(cat /dev/cpuset/tasks); do /bin/echo $pid > /dev/cpuset/system/tasks; done