Re: unable to mmap /dev/kmem

[Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org>]

On Fri, 2007-01-19 at 17:12 +0000, Hugh Dickins wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Jan 2007, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> > On Fri, 2007-01-19 at 16:33 +0000, Hugh Dickins wrote:
> > > Though I do wonder whether
> > > it was safe to change its behaviour at that stage: more evidence that
> > > few have actually been using mmap of /dev/kmem. 
> > 
> > ... and maybe we should just kill /dev/kmem entirely... it seems mostly
> > used by rootkits but very few other things, if any at all...
> 
> It was discourteous of me not to CC you: I thought you might say that ;)
> Though so long as /dev/mem support remains, /dev/kmem might as well?

they're not the same; for a long time, /dev/mem on actual memory
returned zeros... so you couldn't use it for rootkits ;)
(that got "fixed" a while ago)

> And be kept as a CONFIG_ option under DEBUG_KERNEL thereafter?

config option is fine I suppose... I assume distros will be smart enough
to turn it off ;)

-- 
if you want to mail me at work (you don't), use arjan (at) linux.intel.com
Test the interaction between Linux and your BIOS via http://www.linuxfirmwarekit.org

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/