VMware ballooning state from inside guest

Install the VMware tools and use

vmware-toolbox-cmd stat balloon

or

cat /proc/vmmemctl

to check.

With recent Linux kernel module vmw_balloon, vmmemctl has moved to debugfs. You have to mount it (if not already done, like on Ubuntu) to check memory target and current values in pages:

lsmod | grep balloon
vmw_balloon            12542  0
mount -t debugfs none /sys/kernel/debug
cat /sys/kernel/debug/vmmemctl