Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:30:32 +0200 | From | Ingo Molnar <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 00/10] Enhance /dev/mem to allow read/write of arbitrary physical addresses |
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* Petr Tesarik <ptesarik@suse.cz> wrote:
> This patch series enhances /dev/mem, so that read and write is > possible at any address. The patchset includes actual > implementation for x86.
This series lacks a description of why this is desired.
My strong opinion is that it's not desired at all: /dev/mem never worked beyond 4G addresses so by today it has become largely obsolete and is on the way out really.
I'm aware of these current /dev/mem uses:
- Xorg maps below 4G non-RAM addresses and the video BIOS
- It used to have some debugging role but these days kexec and kgdb has largely taken over that role - partly due to the 4G limit.
- there's some really horrible out-of-tree drivers that do mmap()s via /dev/mem, those should be fixed if they want to move beyond 4G: their char device should be mmap()able.
- all distro kernel's i'm aware of use CONFIG_STRICT_DEVMEM=y, which restricts /dev/mem to non-RAM pages of physical memory. [ With the sad inclusion of the first 1MB, which Xorg needs. ]
Are you aware of any legitimate usecases?
Frankly, i dont think we ever *want* to 'fix' /dev/mem to support addresses beyond 4G and grow messy userspace (and kernelspace) that somehow relies on that. Thank goodness that we never supported it ...
Thanks,
Ingo
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