Using systemd cgroups to control CPU affinity?

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1

I run BOINC on one of my systems. I want to set the CPU affinty for 2 services (boinc-client and autofs) to use the same set of CPUs. From what I have read it should be as simple as:

sudo systemctl set-property autofs.service AllowedCPUs=8-15,24-31 
sudo systemctl set-property boinc-client.service AllowedCPUs=8-15,24-31

However after doing that, I see this:

ps -eo pid,psr,user | grep boinc
  315  30 boinc
  316   9 boinc
  520  28 boinc
  521   0 boinc
 1950  24 boinc
 2209  31 boinc
 2895   0 boinc
 2896  23 boinc
 3291  15 boinc
 3296  20 boinc
 3304  20 boinc
 5158  14 boinc
 5224   3 boinc
 6364  10 boinc
 6365  12 boinc
 6614  27 boinc
 6961   3 boinc
 6970   8 boinc
 6974   9 boinc
 6975  18 boinc
 6977  26 boinc
 7243  21 boinc
 7317  28 boinc
 7391  15 boinc
 7424   6 boinc
 7506   1 boinc
 7508  27 boinc
 8517  31 boinc
 8853  20 boinc
 8854  24 boinc
10260  12 boinc
10262  21 boinc
10269  26 boinc
11505   3 boinc
11506  25 boinc
11602  16 boinc
12180  29 boinc
13709  30 boinc
14245   8 boinc
14957  30 boinc
14959  28 boinc
14960  15 boinc
14961  29 boinc
15236  13 boinc
15261  28 boinc
15291  12 boinc
15305  26 boinc
15306   7 boinc
15386  16 boinc
15394  21 boinc
15395  29 boinc
15862  30 boinc
15864   1 boinc
15866   3 boinc
15867   3 boinc
16013  17 boinc
16014  30 boinc
16016  31 boinc
16525  30 boinc
16592  31 boinc
16656  20 boinc
16685   8 boinc
16687  31 boinc
16688  18 boinc
16690  12 boinc
16942  14 boinc
16953  23 boinc
16974  19 boinc
16997   0 boinc
17045  29 boinc
17046  14 boinc
18430   8 boinc
18432  27 boinc
18433   6 boinc
18434   8 boinc
19099  10 boinc
19515  14 boinc
19537  11 boinc
19593  28 boinc
19594  25 boinc
21032  18 boinc
21035  31 boinc
21041   1 boinc
21652  29 boinc
21653   0 boinc
21802  18 boinc
22063  26 boinc
22068   5 boinc
22082  27 boinc
22123  15 boinc
22127  17 boinc
23767  27 boinc
24551  30 boinc
24552   8 boinc
25161  10 boinc
25202  11 boinc
25203  24 boinc
26359   9 boinc
26360  21 boinc
26464  19 boinc
26484   9 boinc
26492  14 boinc
26494  13 boinc
26495  11 boinc
26496  31 boinc
26773   7 boinc
26795  28 boinc
26844  28 boinc
26845  29 boinc
26861  28 boinc
26862   0 boinc
26871   7 boinc
26964  29 boinc
26965   4 boinc
27192   8 boinc
28154  27 boinc
28309   1 boinc
28338   1 boinc
28339  25 boinc
28340   8 boinc
30032  18 boinc
31450  12 boinc
31490  13 boinc
31491  22 boinc
31627  30 boinc
31731  30 boinc
31733  20 boinc
31734  27 boinc
31735  21 boinc
32032  11 boinc
32048   8 boinc
32050  27 boinc
32051  29 boinc
32053   8 boinc
32056  25 boinc
32100   0 boinc
32101  27 boinc
32277  20 boinc
32528   5 boinc
32550  15 boinc
32555  29 boinc
32557  27 boinc
32570  27 boinc
32633  14 boinc
32635   1 boinc

Clearly this doesn’t do what I thought it would. I am by no means a Linux guru and have been reading and trying things and undoing them for hours now. I am stuck, so I came here to ask for help before I put it down for the day.

2

Are you using unified cgroup hierarchy? It is not default on Leap (and I am not sure whether systemd version in Leap fully supports it).

3

After reading up on the unified cgroup hierachy, it turns out that, yes indeed, I am trying to use it. I’ll have to enable it later tonight via

yast bootloader

as per Kernel control groups | System Analysis and Tuning Guide | openSUSE Leap 15.5 and see if that does the trick.

Thanks for pointing that out.

4

Using yast bootloader to add the kernel argument

systemd.unified_cgroup_hierarchy=1

and rebooting the system did the trick. Thank you @arvidjaar for your help. After researching this for many, many hours it’s finally working as needed.