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

Matt Mackall
2003-10-17T22:23:13Z

On Fri, Oct 17, 2003 at 04:10:36PM -0600, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
> 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).

I don't see any reason not to returns zeros. A hole in a file does the
same thing, after all. The fact that the hole is big makes no difference.

--
Matt Mackall : http://www.selenic.com : Linux development and consulting