/dev/mem, iopl, etc.

[Samuel Thibault]

Hello,

Some tools like dmidecode etc. assume that /dev/mem can be mmaped to get
access to ROM strings, PCI stuff, etc.  For now, Hurd systems do have
a /dev/mem node translated by "storeio --no-cache mem", but GNU Mach
doesn't have a mem driver...  It used to have an iopl one, but that got
dropped, provided that we'd rather implement a server for that purpose,
see thread at
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2007-05/msg00014.html

My question is: can we tell applications that they can just use /dev/mem
if they don't care about Hurdish features, so that they will work as
soon as the Hurd has a compatibility /dev/mem interface?

The corollary of this would be that for now Debian GNU/Hurd could just
use iopl in the meanwhile.

Samuel