Reading MTRRs via the MTRRIOC_GET_ENTRY ioctl()

The MTRRIOC_GET_ENTRY ioctl() is a useful but under-used ioctl() for reading the MTRR configuration from /proc/mtrr.  Instead of having to read and parse /proc/mtrr, the ioctl() provides a simple interface to easily fetch each MTRR.

A struct mtrr_gentry is passed to the ioctl() with the regnum member set to the MTRR register one wants to read. After a successful ioctl() call, size member of struct mtrr_gentry is less than 1 if the MTRR is disabled, otherwise it is populated with the MTRR register configuration.

Below is an example showing how to use MTRRIOC_GET_ENTRY:

 #include <stdio.h>  
 #include <stdlib.h>  
 #include <string.h>  
 #include <sys/types.h>  
 #include <sys/stat.h>  
 #include <sys/ioctl.h>  
 #include <asm/mtrr.h>  
 #include <fcntl.h>  
   
 #define LONGSZ    ((int)(sizeof(long)<<1))  
   
 int main(int argc, char *argv[])  
 {  
     struct mtrr_gentry gentry;  
     int fd;  
   
     static char *mtrr_type[] = {  
         "Uncachable",  
         "Write Combining",  
         "Unknown",  
         "Unknown",  
         "Write Through",  
         "Write Protect",  
         "Write Back"  
     };  
   
     if ((fd = open("/proc/mtrr", O_RDONLY, 0)) < 0) {  
         fprintf(stderr, "Cannot open /proc/mtrr!\n");  
         exit(EXIT_FAILURE);  
     }  
           
     memset(&gentry, 0, sizeof(gentry));  
   
     while (!ioctl(fd, MTRRIOC_GET_ENTRY, &gentry)) {  
         if (gentry.size < 1)   
             printf("%u: Disabled\n", gentry.regnum);  
         else  
             printf("%u: 0x%*.*lx..0x%*.*lx %s\n", gentry.regnum,  
                 LONGSZ, LONGSZ, gentry.base,   
                 LONGSZ, LONGSZ, gentry.base + gentry.size,  
                 mtrr_type[gentry.type]);  
         gentry.regnum++;  
     }  
     close(fd);  
   
     exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);  
 }  

The downside to using MTRRIOC_GET_ENTRY is that MTRR base addresses > 4GB get returned as zero, which is a known "feature" of this interface - the offending code in mtrr_ioctl() in arch/x86/kernel/cpu/mtrr/if.c is as follows:

 /* Hide entries that go above 4GB */  
 if (gentry.base + size - 1 >= (1UL << (8 * sizeof(gentry.size) - PAGE_SHIFT))  
   || size >= (1UL << (8 * sizeof(gentry.size) - PAGE_SHIFT)))  
     gentry.base = gentry.size = gentry.type = 0;  
 else {   
     gentry.base <<= PAGE_SHIFT;  
     gentry.size = size << PAGE_SHIFT;  
     gentry.type = type;   
 }   

..clearly showing that gentry.base, .size and .type are set to zero for entries > 4GB.