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Date:      Mon, 22 Jan 1996 08:36:00 -0600 (CST)
From:      "Mike Pritchard" <mpp@mpp.minn.net>
To:        luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it (Luigi Rizzo)
Cc:        bugs@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: dd /dev/mem ...
Message-ID:  <199601221436.IAA00318@mpp.minn.net>
In-Reply-To: <199601221236.NAA05157@labinfo.iet.unipi.it> from "Luigi Rizzo" at Jan 22, 96 01:36:59 pm

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Luigi Rizzo wrote:
> 
> Running 2.1R, I tried the following running as root:
> 
>     dd if=/dev/mem bs=32k skip=512 count=1 | dd bs=32 count=1 | hexdump
> 
> and my P100 w/ 16MB was frozen: no keyboard, no mouse, everything
> still on the X screen.
> 
> the manpage says "Only offsets within the bounds of /dev/mem are
> allowed.", and 512*32K is right beyond the physical RAM. However, I
> have run C programs which would read beyond the limit with no problems.
> 
> Is it a bug in /dev/mem, "dd" or me ?

Funny you should mention this -- I just crashed my machine trying
the same thing trying to verify PR# 383.  As near as I can tell, it
only locks up the machine when you run it from X *and* the current
vty is the X window.  If you do something like:
	sleep 30; dd if=/dev/mem ...
and then switch to vty0, the machine won't lock up.  Running from
an ordinary syscons vty doesn't seem to be a problem.
-- 
Mike Pritchard
mpp@minn.net
"Go that way.  Really fast.  If something gets in your way, turn"



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