PSI metrics emitted as zeroes when PSI is unavailable

[amritansh1502]

What is the Problem ?

When PSI (Pressure Stall Information) is not available on the host (kernel compiled without CONFIG_PSI, or booted with psi=0), cAdvisor still emits PSI Prometheus metrics (container_pressure_cpu_stalled_seconds_total, container_pressure_cpu_waiting_seconds_total, etc.) with zero values. This is misleading for monitoring and alerting systems, which cannot distinguish "PSI unavailable" from "PSI available but system is idle."

Main Cause: -
statPSI() in opencontainers/cgroups (fs2/psi.go) correctly returns nil when PSI files don't exist or the kernel returns ENOTSUP. However, the nil signal is lost in cAdvisor's processing:

setPSIStats() in container/libcontainer/handler.go receives the nil *cgroups.PSIStats and silently does nothing, leaving the info.PSIStats at its zero value.

The Prometheus collector in metrics/prometheus.go reads those zero values and emits them as real metrics.
Since CpuStats.PSI, DiskIoStats.PSI, and MemoryStats.PSI in info/v1/container.go are value types (not pointers), there is no way for code to distinguish "PSI unavailable" from "PSI value is genuinely zero."

Possible approaches

• Change PSI fields to pointer types (PSI *PSIStats instead of PSI PSIStats) so nil means unavailable. The Prometheus collector can then skip metrics when the pointer is nil. This is a breaking API change.

• Add a PSISupported bool field alongside the existing PSI fields. Non-breaking, but adds a redundant field that consumers must remember to check.

• Rely on callers to gate PressureMetrics in includedMetrics before creating the manager. This is what Kubernetes currently does (Fix zero PSI metrics emitted when OS doesn't enable PSI kubernetes/kubernetes#137326), but it requires every cAdvisor consumer to implement their own PSI detection.

Related
kubernetes/kubernetes#136333 (original bug report)
kubernetes/kubernetes#137326 (kubelet-side fix)

[Kartavyasonar]

I'd like to work on this. Planning to go with pointer types (PSI *PSIStats) -nil means unavailable, the Prometheus collector skips emission when nil. Will open a PR soon.

[Kartavyasonar]

I've opened PR #3881 implementing the pointer-type approach changing CpuStats.PSI, MemoryStats.PSI, and DiskIoStats.PSI to *PSIStats so the Prometheus collector can skip emission when PSI is unavailable. Happy to adjust the approach if maintainers prefer the PSISupported bool instead.