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[Galland <1304001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I had this problem on a PC with Xen and Linux VMs. The VMs are configured to boot with just 400 MB of RAM allotted to them and up to 8GB max RAM.
I was never able to get above some 4.3GB in any VM, and log showed the "reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17" message at that point


The SOLUTION that fixes it was proposed at qubes-devel mailing list (Qubes is a Xen+Linux distro for ultra-secure PCs):
     https://groups.google.com/d/msg/qubes-devel/VRqkFj1IOtA/UgMgnwfxVSIJ

As proposed there: if I set initial RAM to 800MB and max ram scales
above 4.3GB (actually tested to up to 11GB), without any "add_memory()
failed" messages.

The explanation given is that the VM's kernel allocates its memory
related structures at boot time and the memory available at that time
limits the max memory it may scale up to. When that happens, it starts
throwing the balloon error messages.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1304001

Title:
   xen:balloon errors in 14.04 beta

Status in “linux” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Committed
Status in “linux” source package in Trusty:
  Fix Committed
Status in “linux” source package in Utopic:
  Fix Committed

Bug description:
  SRU Justification:
  [Impact]
  The following errors may occur on HVM instances on EC2: xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17

  [Test Case]
  Boot Ubuntu Trusty 3.13 series HVM instances and check dmesg for this error message.

  [Fix]
  A minimal fix for this bug can be found here:
  https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=3dcf63677d4eb7fdfc13290c8558c301d2588fe8
  This allows the ballooning to be cancelled if adding new memory failed which means that the error message is printed once instead of repeatedly.

  There should still be effort to root cause this issue and determine
  how to avoid the ballooning errors in the first place. I still think
  this patch should be applied to alleviate symptoms until root cause is
  discovered.

  --

  Xen balloon errors on HVM instances on EC2 (Xen 4.2.amazon):

  ubuntu@ip-10-63-20-99:~$ uname -a
  Linux ip-10-63-20-99 3.13.0-23-generic #45-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 4 06:58:38 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
  ubuntu@ip-10-63-20-99:~$ dmesg  |grep xen
  [    0.000000] xen:events: Xen HVM callback vector for event delivery is enabled
  [    0.494613] xen:balloon: Initialising balloon driver
  [    0.496046] xen_balloon: Initialising balloon driver
  [    0.500077] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17
  [    0.541047] Switched to clocksource xen
  [    0.562579] xen: --> pirq=16 -> irq=8 (gsi=8)
  [    0.562622] xen: --> pirq=17 -> irq=12 (gsi=12)
  [    0.562649] xen: --> pirq=18 -> irq=1 (gsi=1)
  [    0.562673] xen: --> pirq=19 -> irq=6 (gsi=6)
  [    0.562705] xen: --> pirq=20 -> irq=4 (gsi=4)
  [    0.920527] xen: --> pirq=21 -> irq=47 (gsi=47)
  [    0.920596] xen:grant_table: Grant tables using version 1 layout
  [    1.029661] xen_netfront: Initialising Xen virtual ethernet driver
  [    1.236083] xenbus_probe_frontend: Device with no driver: device/vfb/0
  [    2.516067] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17
  [    6.533941] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17
  [   14.560075] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17
  [   30.592064] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17
  [   62.688153] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17
  [   94.752164] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17
  [  126.816161] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17
  [  158.880084] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17
  [  190.944069] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17
  [  223.008141] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17
  [  255.072112] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17
  [  287.136190] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17
  [  319.200053] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17
  [  351.264164] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17
  [  383.328080] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17
  [  415.392077] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17
  [  447.456112] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17
  [  479.520128] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17
  [  511.584110] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17
  [  543.648181] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17
  [  575.712070] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17
  [  607.776178] xen:balloon: reserve_additional_memory: add_memory() failed: -17

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