Linux: Cgroups Resource Limiting

This document describes the process of a basic installation of the arbiter2 tool, that can be used to apply CPU & Memory limits on logged-in Linux users, using cgroups accounting. The official documentation can be found at https://github.com/subfission/arbiter2/blob/master/INSTALL.md

Installing Python

$ sudo yum install python36 

Installing external modules

$ python3 -m ensurepip --default-pip
$ pip3 install matplotlib toml requests  # requests may not be necessary

Acquiring the Arbiter2 source files

$ sudo yum install git
$ git clone https://gitlab.chpc.utah.edu/arbiter2/arbiter2.git optional-destination-directory

Setting up 'arbiter' user to run the script

$ useradd -M -N -r -s /bin/false -c "System account for Arbiter2" arbiter

# Create group arbiter
$ groupadd arbiter 

# Add user arbiter to group arbiter
$ usermod -a -G arbiter arbiter

Allowing cgroup files to be edited without root via sudo

$ sudo python3 tools/make_sudoers.py -u arbiter -g arbiter > /etc/sudoers.d/arbiter2

Create logs directory

$ mkdir -p arbiter2/logs/`hostname`
$ chown arbiter arbiter2/logs/`hostname`
$ chmod 773 arbiter2/logs/`hostname`