[PATCH v2 2/2] restrict /dev/mem to idle io memory ranges

[Dan Williams]

On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 5:28 PM, Dan Williams <dan.j.williams at intel.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 4:47 PM, Andrew Morton
> <akpm at linux-foundation.org> wrote:
>> On Tue, 24 Nov 2015 16:34:19 -0800 Dan Williams <dan.j.williams at intel.com> wrote:
>>
>>> > IOW, a very good description of the problem-being-solved would help out
>>> > a lot here...
>>>
>>> I'll fold the eventual result of this discussion into the changelog if
>>> I can convince you it's worth moving forward.
>>
>> I'm easily convinced ;) Please let's get all the info into the right
>> place, make sure it answers the thus-far-asked questions (at least) and
>> we'll take it from there.
>>
>> And please do have a think about switching as much as possible over to
>> runtime-configurability.  Because "please echo foo > /proc" is a heck
>> of a lot nicer than "please reboot with iomem=" which is a heck of a lot
>> nicer than "please ask vendor for a new kernel".
>
> Actually, we already have runtime configuration.  For example, if you
> want to muck with pmem via /dev/mem, just do this first:
>
>     echo namespace0.0 > /sys/bus/nd/drivers/nd_pmem/unbind

Here's the summary of the thread that I will add to the changelog:

---

In general if a device driver is busily using a memory region it
already informs other parts of the kernel to not touch it via
request_mem_region().  /dev/mem should honor the same safety
restriction by default.  Debugging a device driver from userspace
becomes more
difficult with this enabled.  Any application using /dev/mem or mmap
of sysfs pci resources will now need to perform the extra step of
either:

1/ Disabling the driver, for example:

  echo <device id> > /dev/bus/<parent bus>/drivers/<driver name>/unbind

2/ Rebooting with "iomem=relaxed" on the command line

3/ Recompiling with CONFIG_IO_STRICT_DEVMEM=n

Traditional users of /dev/mem like dosemu are unaffected because the
first 1MB of memory is not subject to the IO_STRICT_DEVMEM
restriction.
Legacy X configurations use /dev/mem to talk to graphics hardware, but
that functionality has since moved to kernel graphics drivers.