From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Andreas Schwab Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2003 22:40:48 +0000 Subject: Re: [RFC] prevent "dd if=/dev/mem" crash Message-Id: List-Id: References: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable To: linux-ia64@vger.kernel.org "Luck, Tony" writes: >> I expect there are probably different opinions about the idea >> that "dd if=3D/dev/mem" exits without doing anything. Sparc and >> 68K have nearby code that bit-buckets writes and returns zeroes >> for reads of page zero. We could do that, too, but it seems like >> kind of a hack, and holes on ia64 can be BIG (on the order of >> 256GB for one box). > > Filling in the holes does seem like a bad idea, but so does returning > EOF when you hit a hole (which is what I think your patch is doing). > > Would ENODEV be better? EIO would probably fit better. Andreas. --=20 Andreas Schwab, SuSE Labs, schwab@suse.de SuSE Linux AG, Deutschherrnstr. 15-19, D-90429 N=FCrnberg Key fingerprint =3D 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756 01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5 "And now for something completely different."