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IOPL(2) Linux Programmer's Manual IOPL(2)
NAME
iopl - change I/O privilege level
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/io.h>
int iopl(int level);
DESCRIPTION
iopl() changes the I/O privilege level of the calling process, as specified by the two
least significant bits in level.
This call is necessary to allow 8514-compatible X servers to run under Linux. Since these
X servers require access to all 65536 I/O ports, the ioperm(2) call is not sufficient.
In addition to granting unrestricted I/O port access, running at a higher I/O privilege
level also allows the process to disable interrupts. This will probably crash the system,
and is not recommended.
Permissions are inherited by fork(2) and execve(2).
The I/O privilege level for a normal process is 0.
This call is mostly for the i386 architecture. On many other architectures it does not
exist or will always return an error.
RETURN VALUE
On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately.
ERRORS
EINVAL level is greater than 3.
ENOSYS This call is unimplemented.
EPERM The calling process has insufficient privilege to call iopl(); the CAP_SYS_RAWIO
capability is required to raise the I/O privilege level above its current value.
CONFORMING TO
iopl() is Linux-specific and should not be used in programs that are intended to be porta‐
ble.
NOTES
Libc5 treats it as a system call and has a prototype in <unistd.h>. Glibc1 does not have
a prototype. Glibc2 has a prototype both in <sys/io.h> and in <sys/perm.h>. Avoid the
latter, it is available on i386 only.
SEE ALSO
ioperm(2), outb(2), capabilities(7)
COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.74 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the
project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of this page, can be
found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Linux 2013-03-15 IOPL(2)
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