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authorShubham Chakraborty <chakrabortyshubham66@gmail.com>2026-03-04 20:34:19 +0530
committerJonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>2026-04-09 08:44:31 -0600
commit136799e52c4d3ebf14705ffffb69b8c7ae6f03ae (patch)
tree523ed06470a2eafcc1500f4ae893a870ceb7edb9 /Documentation
parentc41d03d03fe95f9f81fcb519d1f934e48e168c29 (diff)
downloadlwn-136799e52c4d3ebf14705ffffb69b8c7ae6f03ae.tar.gz
lwn-136799e52c4d3ebf14705ffffb69b8c7ae6f03ae.zip
docs: sysctl: Add documentation for /proc/sys/xen/
Add documentation for the Xen hypervisor sysctl controls in /proc/sys/xen/balloon/. Documents the hotplug_unpopulated tunable (available when CONFIG_XEN_BALLOON_MEMORY_HOTPLUG is enabled) which controls whether unpopulated memory regions are automatically hotplugged when the Xen balloon driver needs to reclaim memory. The documentation is based on source code analysis of drivers/xen/balloon.c. Signed-off-by: Shubham Chakraborty <chakrabortyshubham66@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> Message-ID: <20260304150419.16738-1-chakrabortyshubham66@gmail.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/index.rst3
-rw-r--r--Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/xen.rst31
2 files changed, 33 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/index.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/index.rst
index e153c96119df..50f00514f0ff 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/index.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/index.rst
@@ -84,7 +84,7 @@ sunrpc/ SUN Remote Procedure Call (NFS)
user/ Per user namespace limits
vm/ memory management tuning
buffer and cache management
-xen/ <undocumented>
+xen/ Xen hypervisor controls
=============== ===============================================================
These are the subdirs I have on my system or have been discovered by
@@ -104,3 +104,4 @@ it :-)
sunrpc
user
vm
+ xen
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/xen.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/xen.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..6c5edc3e5e4c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/xen.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
+===============
+/proc/sys/xen/
+===============
+
+Copyright (c) 2026, Shubham Chakraborty <chakrabortyshubham66@gmail.com>
+
+For general info and legal blurb, please look in
+Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/index.rst.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+These files show up in ``/proc/sys/xen/``, depending on the
+kernel configuration:
+
+.. contents:: :local:
+
+balloon/hotplug_unpopulated
+===========================
+
+This flag controls whether unpopulated memory ranges are automatically
+hotplugged as system RAM.
+
+- ``0``: Unpopulated ranges are not hotplugged (default).
+- ``1``: Unpopulated ranges are automatically hotplugged.
+
+When enabled, the Xen balloon driver will add memory regions that are
+marked as unpopulated in the Xen memory map to the system as usable RAM.
+This allows for dynamic memory expansion in Xen guest domains.
+
+This option is only available when the kernel is built with
+``CONFIG_XEN_BALLOON_MEMORY_HOTPLUG`` enabled.