.\" Copyright (c) 1992, 1993
.\"	The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
.\"
.\" This software was developed by the Computer Systems Engineering group
.\" at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory under DARPA contract BG 91-66 and
.\" contributed to Berkeley.
.\"
.\" %sccs.include.redist.man%
.\"
.\"     @(#)mem.4	8.1 (Berkeley) 06/05/93
.\"
.Dd 
.Dt MEM 4 sparc
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm mem ,
.Nm kmem
.Nd main memory
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The file
.Nm /dev/mem
is an interface to the physical memory of the
computer.
Byte offsets in this file are interpreted as physical memory addresses.
Reading and writing this file is equivalent to reading and writing
memory itself.
An error will be returned if an attempt is made to reference
an offset outside of
.Nm /dev/mem .
.Pp
Kernel virtual memory is accessed via the file
.Nm /dev/kmem
in the same manner as
.Nm /dev/mem .
Only kernel virtual addresses that are currently mapped to memory are allowed.
.Sh SPARC
On the
.Tn SPARC ,
physical memory may be discontiguous;
kernel virtual memory begins at
.Li 0xf8000000 .
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width /dev/kmem -compact
.It Pa /dev/mem
.It Pa /dev/kmem
.El
.Sh HISTORY
The files
.Nm mem
and
.Nm kmem
appeared in
.At v6 .