RE: [RFC] prevent "dd if=/dev/mem" crash

Luck, Tony
2003-10-17T22:19:49Z

> I expect there are probably different opinions about the idea
> that "dd if=/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?

-Tony