VIRTIO_BALLOON(4)

📦 version 15.1, in freebsd 14.5, freebsd 15.1, nixpkgs unstable

💖 VIRTIO_BALLOON(4) 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to the virtio_balloon page 💅 — it's a Kernel Interfaces Manual situation, and honestly? it's a short one. we love a concise icon. let's get into it ✨

🎀 NAME 🎀

virtio_balloon — the VirtIO Memory Balloon driver 🎈

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

so if you wanna bake this driver straight into your kernel (main character energy, no modules, no loading), you drop these lines into your kernel configuration file:

device virtio_balloon

orrrr, if you'd rather load it as a module at boot time (lowkey easier ngl), you put this line in loader.conf(5):

virtio_balloon_load="YES"

that's it. that's the whole synopsis. slay 🫶

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so the virtio_balloon device driver provides support for VirtIO memory balloon devices. periodt 💅

and like, what even is a memory balloon? okay so bestie, here's the vibe: the memory balloon lets the guest — at the request of the hypervisor — return memory that was allocated to the hypervisor, so it can be made available to other guests 🌸. sharing is caring fr fr.

and the hypervisor can later signal the balloon to return the memory. so it's giving generous, then it's giving "jk come back" 😭💖. the whole thing is a back-and-forth and we're obsessed.

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

🧚 HISTORY 🧚

the virtio_balloon driver was written by Bryan Venteicher <bryanv@FreeBSD.org> — king behavior, we stan 👑✨.

it first appeared in FreeBSD 9.0 🎀.

okay that's the whole page, bestie, you ate that 🍓💜. this cutie dropped on Debian, January 22, 2012, and it's filed under VIRTIO_BALLOON(4) — go forth and balloon responsibly 🎈💖

📦 where this page comes from