Re: [PATCH] /dev/random: Insufficient of entropy on manyarchitectures

From: JÃrn Engel
Date: Thu Sep 12 2013 - 21:34:56 EST


On Thu, 12 September 2013 19:35:36 -0400, JÃrn Engel wrote:
>
> I think the existing code is doing just fine for low interrupt loads.
> It makes sense to spend a bit more work to squeeze the last bit of
> randomness out. But when you get lots of interrupts, you can be
> sloppy and just xor things into the pool.

Btw, if we make collection cheap enough, we can start collecting
entropy from the scheduler. Computers are fairly deterministic, but
not that much. The exact time when calling schedule(), the kernel
stack pointer and the userspace stack pointer all contain a bit of
entropy. Particularly on machines that lack input and disk
randomness I would expect some benefits from this.

JÃrn

--
Audacity augments courage; hesitation, fear.
-- Publilius Syrus
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