From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 20:30:01 +0000 Subject: [Linux-ia64] Re: /proc/kcore - how to fix it MIME-Version: 1 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="==_Exmh_1928944008P" Message-Id: List-Id: To: linux-ia64@vger.kernel.org --==_Exmh_1928944008P Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On Tue, 20 May 2003 13:05:15 PDT, "Luck, Tony" said: > What about discontiguous memory. Since /proc/kcore is super-user only > we could continue with the attitude that the user should be careful not > to touch memory that doesn't exist, or we could be kind and provide an > API so that the architecture specific code that finds the memory can tell > /proc/kcore what exists. "don't touch memory that doesn't exist" is a bad idea unless there is *some* sort of API that allows the program to intuit what does/doesn't exist. If the program can't find out what is legal without hitting an oops or worse, nobody will use /proc/kcore, and then why bother implementing it? (Note that I'd consider "look *here* for a pointer to known-existing memory, then look 24 bytes into there for a pointer to a linked list of memory block address/size pairs" sufficient, no need for a fancy /proc interface. Of course, that's just my opinion - those who don't have memories of pointer chasing in S/360 assembler under OS/MVT may have other opinions ;) --==_Exmh_1928944008P Content-Type: application/pgp-signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Exmh version 2.5 07/13/2001 iD8DBQE+ypBIcC3lWbTT17ARAq1KAJ4o/hjlZcsI9Tv9LBpvY9zxbwhO/QCbBoZo EBcJ1g8p6RFULfWBxzh0/vk= =uCNH -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --==_Exmh_1928944008P--