Messages in this thread | | | From | John Labovitz <> | Subject | Re: ANNOUNCE: /dev/bios - flash rom bios driver | Date | Wed, 11 Feb 1998 09:17:56 -0800 |
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Chip Salzenberg said:
> According to Dr. Werner Fink: > > What's about mistakes? This interface is very easy and > > therefore it _is_ very dangerous, isn't it? > > I agree. Perhaps the device should require that writing take place > at an offset greater than zero ("dd oskip=1k"?), [...]
i'm just a kernel neophyte here, but since we're talking about hacks (;-)...
how about a sort of side-device that's used as a guard? this reminds me of the big paper-cutter machine i used in high school print shop -- one had to press the left-button with the left hand and the right-button with the right hand, or the blade wouldn't come down. so there could be a /dev/bios and /dev/biosguard, the latter of which has to be open (for writing, of course) in order for a dangerous write to the former. like this:
fd1 = open("/dev/biosguard", O_WRONLY); fd2 = open("/dev/bios", O_WRONLY); write(fd2, newbioscode, newbioscodelen); close(fd2); close(fd1);
i'm assuming the bios driver could know which process has opened /dev/bios and make sure that same process has also opened /dev/biosguard.
obviously, this could work under /proc, too.
john
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