Putting a Group of Processes into a CPU and Memory Jail -- First Steps with Control Groups in Linux

Control groups are really, really great. They can effectively make your system act as if it were two or more systems in one. It's like virtualization without all the overhead and much more efficient than e.g. renicing. (Just a little overhead... and no hard cpu limit yet, but still great!) You can lock a process into a jail that is only as fast as e.g. 10% of your cpu and has only 10 % of your memory and 10 % of your disk speed. Pretty much whatever it does, it won't be able to really annoy you. This means that e.g. big compiles in the backgroud *really* don't affect your browsing *at all*. Here are some presentation slides about cgroups. So let's see how we take the first steps to get there. I will show you how to do it manually step by step so you can learn how it works.
Read more »