How can I numactl membind a process inside Docker container?

Question

I have an Intel Xeon Phi 64-core CPU with 16GB on-chip memory set as NUMA node 1. I want to bind a process running inside a Docker container to this NUMA node, but it errors out:

root@Docker$ sudo numactl --membind 1 python script.py
Error: set_mempolicy: Operation not permitted
setting membind: Operation not permitted

I also tried to bind the entire Docker mothership to NUMA node 1, but no luck:

localhost$ sudo numactl --membind 1 docker run xyz /bin/bash

This doesn't give any error, but shows no utilization of on-chip memory.

My question is: How can I bind a process to NUMA node 1 successfully? Thanks!

Answer 1

1. You need to get which cpus belongs to 1 numa node:

   $ lscpu | grep node1

   NUMA node1 CPU(s): 8-15,24-31

2. Create cpuset for docker:

   $ cgcreate -g cpuset:docker

   $ echo 8-15 > /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset/docker/cpuset.cpus

3. If you want to run just certain containers on specific NUMA node:

   cgcreate -g cpuset:my-cgroup

   echo 8-15 > /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset/my-cgroup/cpuset.cpus

4. Docker allows to put new containers under a different cgroup:

   docker run -it --rm --cgroup-parent=/my-cgroup/ ubuntu bash

For more information see https://sthbrx.github.io/blog/2016/07/27/get-off-my-lawn-separating-docker-workloads-using-cgroups/ .