linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] VMware Balloon driver

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Message-ID: <20100405230113.GB25970@dtor-ws.eng.vmware.com>
Date:	Mon, 5 Apr 2010 16:01:14 -0700
From:	Dmitry Torokhov <dtor@...are.com>
To:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:	Avi Kivity <avi@...hat.com>, Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@...p.org>,
	"linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	"pv-drivers@...are.com" <pv-drivers@...are.com>,
	Dan Magenheimer <dan.magenheimer@...cle.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] VMware Balloon driver

On Mon, Apr 05, 2010 at 03:40:23PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Tue, 06 Apr 2010 01:26:11 +0300
> Avi Kivity <avi@...hat.com> wrote:
> 
> > On 04/06/2010 01:17 AM, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > >> The basic idea of the driver is to allow a guest system to give up
> > >> memory it isn't using so it can be reused by other virtual machines (or
> > >> the host itself).
> > >>      
> > > So...  does this differ in any fundamental way from what hibernation
> > > does, via shrink_all_memory()?
> > >    
> > 
> > Just the _all_ bit, and the fact that we need to report the freed page 
> > numbers to the hypervisor.
> > 
> 
> So...  why not tweak that, rather than implementing some parallel thing?

I guess the main difference is that freeing memory is not the primary
goal; we want to make sure that guest does not use some of its memory
without notifying hypervisor first.

-- 
Dmitry

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