1.\" Copyright (c) 1992, 1993 2.\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. 3.\" 4.\" This code is derived from software developed by the Computer Systems 5.\" Engineering group at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory under DARPA contract 6.\" BG 91-66 and contributed to Berkeley. 7.\" 8.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 9.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions 10.\" are met: 11.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright 12.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 13.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright 14.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the 15.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 16.\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software 17.\" must display the following acknowledgement: 18.\" This product includes software developed by the University of 19.\" California, Berkeley and its contributors. 20.\" 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors 21.\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software 22.\" without specific prior written permission. 23.\" 24.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND 25.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE 26.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE 27.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE 28.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL 29.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS 30.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) 31.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT 32.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY 33.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF 34.\" SUCH DAMAGE. 35.\" 36.\" @(#)kvm.3 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/4/93 37.\" 38.Dd June 4, 1993 39.Dt KVM 3 40.Os 41.Sh NAME 42.Nm kvm 43.Nd kernel memory interface 44.Sh DESCRIPTION 45The 46.Xr kvm 3 47library provides a uniform interface for accessing kernel virtual memory 48images, including live systems and crash dumps. 49Access to live systems is via 50/dev/mem 51while crash dumps can be examined via the core file generated by 52.Xr savecore 8 . 53The interface behaves identically in both cases. 54Memory can be read and written, kernel symbol addresses can be 55looked up efficiently, and information about user processes can 56be gathered. 57.Pp 58.Fn kvm_open 59is first called to obtain a descriptor for all subsequent calls. 60.Sh COMPATIBILITY 61The kvm interface was first introduced in SunOS. A considerable 62number of programs have been developed that use this interface, 63making backward compatibility highly desirable. 64In most respects, the Sun kvm interface is consistent and clean. 65Accordingly, the generic portion of the interface (i.e., 66.Fn kvm_open , 67.Fn kvm_close , 68.Fn kvm_read , 69.Fn kvm_write , 70and 71.Fn kvm_nlist ) 72has been incorporated into the BSD interface. Indeed, many kvm 73applications (i.e., debuggers and statistical monitors) use only 74this subset of the interface. 75.Pp 76The process interface was not kept. This is not a portability 77issue since any code that manipulates processes is inherently 78machine dependent. 79.Pp 80Finally, the Sun kvm error reporting semantics are poorly defined. 81The library can be configured either to print errors to stderr automatically, 82or to print no error messages at all. 83In the latter case, the nature of the error cannot be determined. 84To overcome this, the BSD interface includes a 85routine, 86.Xr kvm_geterr 3 , 87to return (not print out) the error message 88corresponding to the most recent error condition on the 89given descriptor. 90.Sh SEE ALSO 91.Xr kvm_close 3 , 92.Xr kvm_getargv 3 , 93.Xr kvm_getenvv 3 , 94.Xr kvm_geterr 3 , 95.Xr kvm_getloadavg 3 , 96.Xr kvm_getprocs 3 , 97.Xr kvm_nlist 3 , 98.Xr kvm_open 3 , 99.Xr kvm_openfiles 3 , 100.Xr kvm_read 3 , 101.Xr kvm_write 3 102