Re: [patch] getrandom.2, random.4: Consolidate and improve discussion on usage of randomness

[Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos <nmav-H+wXaHxf7aLQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org>]

On Thu, 2016-11-10 at 19:16 +0100, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote:
> Nikos, Laurent,
> So, I must admit that after your respective mails, I'm still not
> clear. Do you think I should keep this patch, change it, or
> discard it?

It is a bit confusing to me. The sentences:
"When  reading  from  /dev/urandom  (GRND_RANDOM  is  not set),
getrandom()"

and

"The behavior when a call to getrandom() that is
blocked  while  reading  from  /dev/urandom"

seem to imply that getrandom() is a wrapper over /dev/urandom (i.e.,
internally it opens the device reads etc). That's not the case the
system call doesn't go through /dev/urandom, although the pools behind
are the same.

maybe saying the /dev/urandom pool instead, but I find that even that
could confuse someone.

So while the text is better and more precise in other aspects than
before I think it is a bit confusing the mix of getrandom() with
/dev/urandom and /dev/random. Maybe copy the text back and separate the
descriptions even if they are very similar at the moment? 

regards,
Nikos

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