Re: /dev/mem

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Hi Prabhu,

On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 9:39 PM, Prabhu nath <gprabhunath@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Thanks a lot for the clarification.
> Is that not a big hole that the kernel provides ?. If I have a root access,
> then I can spoil the whole system.

There are many ways to "spoil" the whole system if you have root
access. The root user can load a module, which has direct access to
all of the same stuff.

If you want to "close" this hole, you can simply turn off the /dev/mem driver.

> Is there any motive for the kernel to support this ?

I use it for debugging. In embedded systems, you can use it to access
registers directly from user space, which is sometimes useful when you
don't want to write a whole driver just to tweak a register. It can
also be bad to tweak registers this way, so you need to be aware of
the issues.

-- 
Dave Hylands
Shuswap, BC, Canada
http://www.DaveHylands.com/

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