Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756839Ab0DEXBT (ORCPT ); Mon, 5 Apr 2010 19:01:19 -0400 Received: from smtp-outbound-2.vmware.com ([65.115.85.73]:51200 "EHLO smtp-outbound-2.vmware.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1756793Ab0DEXBO (ORCPT ); Mon, 5 Apr 2010 19:01:14 -0400 Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2010 16:01:14 -0700 From: Dmitry Torokhov To: Andrew Morton Cc: Avi Kivity , Jeremy Fitzhardinge , "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" , "pv-drivers@vmware.com" , Dan Magenheimer Subject: Re: [PATCH] VMware Balloon driver Message-ID: <20100405230113.GB25970@dtor-ws.eng.vmware.com> References: <20100404215202.GA13020@dtor-ws.eng.vmware.com> <20100405142419.2c9bea3d.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <4BBA5E1C.10706@goop.org> <20100405151720.8a6ac5e3.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <4BBA6383.7070601@redhat.com> <20100405154023.c7e4f877.akpm@linux-foundation.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20100405154023.c7e4f877.akpm@linux-foundation.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-08-17) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1132 Lines: 31 On Mon, Apr 05, 2010 at 03:40:23PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote: > On Tue, 06 Apr 2010 01:26:11 +0300 > Avi Kivity 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 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/