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Date:      Thu, 24 May 2001 16:55:06 +0930
From:      Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
To:        Doug Denault <doug@safeport.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: /dev/io: Operation not permitted
Message-ID:  <20010524165506.I81537@wantadilla.lemis.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.1010523175346.14934B-100000@fledge.watson.org>; from doug@safeport.com on Wed, May 23, 2001 at 06:04:34PM -0400
References:  <Pine.BSF.4.21.0105231727170.6227-100000@pemaquid.safeport.com> <Pine.BSF.3.96.1010523175346.14934B-100000@fledge.watson.org>

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On Wednesday, 23 May 2001 at 18:04:34 -0400, Doug Denault wrote:
> On Wed, 23 May 2001 doug@safeport.com wrote:
>> I have a 4.3 system where root can not write to /dev/io. I assume I have screwed
>> something up but  I am told the permissions:
>>
>> crw-------  1 root  wheel    2,  14 May  9 19:56 /dev/io
>>
>> are okay and indeed matches my other systems. The man page io(4) would suggest
>> this is hard to do:
>>
>>    DESCRIPTION
>>      The special file /dev/io is a controlled security hole that allows a pro-
>>      cess to gain I/O privileges (which are normally reserved for kernel-
>>      internal code).  Any process that holds a file descriptor on /dev/io open
>>      will get its IOPL bits in the flag register set, thus allowing it to per-
>>      form direct I/O operations.  This can be useful in order to write user-
>>      land programs that handle some hardware directly.
>>
>>      The entire access control is handled by the file access permissions of
>>      /dev/io, so care should be taken in granting rights for this device.
>>      Note that even read/only access will grant the full I/O privileges.
>>
>> However:
>>
>> Last login: Tue May 22 18:21:34 2001 from pemaquid.boltsys
>> Copyright (c) 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994
>>         The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
>> FreeBSD 4.3-RELEASE (GENERIC) #0: Sat Apr 21 10:54:49 GMT 2001
>>
>> Welcome to FreeBSD!
>>
>> mneme:~> su
>> Password:
>> mneme:/home/doug# echo "poo I say" > /dev/io
>> /dev/io: Operation not permitted.
>
> Okay I will answer my own question here. I was messing around with
> security levels which I _HAD_ set to 1. From man 8 init:
>
>    1   Secure mode - the system immutable and system append-only flags may
>        not be turned off; disks for mounted filesystems, /dev/mem, and
>        /dev/kmem may not be opened for writing; kernel modules (see
>        kld(4)) may not be loaded or unloaded.
>
> You can add /dev/io to the list.

This too is correct.  Does it work if you use securelevel 0?

Greg
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