xref: /original-bsd/share/man/man4/man4.sparc/mem.4 (revision 42f60e33)
1.\" Copyright (c) 1992, 1993
2.\"	The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
3.\"
4.\" This software was developed by the Computer Systems Engineering group
5.\" at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory under DARPA contract BG 91-66 and
6.\" contributed to Berkeley.
7.\"
8.\" %sccs.include.redist.man%
9.\"
10.\"     @(#)mem.4	8.1 (Berkeley) 06/05/93
11.\"
12.Dd
13.Dt MEM 4 sparc
14.Os
15.Sh NAME
16.Nm mem ,
17.Nm kmem
18.Nd main memory
19.Sh DESCRIPTION
20The file
21.Nm /dev/mem
22is an interface to the physical memory of the
23computer.
24Byte offsets in this file are interpreted as physical memory addresses.
25Reading and writing this file is equivalent to reading and writing
26memory itself.
27An error will be returned if an attempt is made to reference
28an offset outside of
29.Nm /dev/mem .
30.Pp
31Kernel virtual memory is accessed via the file
32.Nm /dev/kmem
33in the same manner as
34.Nm /dev/mem .
35Only kernel virtual addresses that are currently mapped to memory are allowed.
36.Sh SPARC
37On the
38.Tn SPARC ,
39physical memory may be discontiguous;
40kernel virtual memory begins at
41.Li 0xf8000000 .
42.Sh FILES
43.Bl -tag -width /dev/kmem -compact
44.It Pa /dev/mem
45.It Pa /dev/kmem
46.El
47.Sh HISTORY
48The files
49.Nm mem
50and
51.Nm kmem
52appeared in
53.At v6 .
54