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Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 06:01:42 +0200
From: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
To: Lee Revell <rlrevell@joe-job.com>
Cc: Florian Schmidt <mista.tapas@gmx.net>,
       linux-kernel <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
       Felipe Alfaro Solana <felipe_alfaro@linuxmail.org>
Subject: Re: [patch] voluntary-preempt-2.6.8.1-P0
Message-ID: <20040816040142.GA13531@elte.hu>
References: <20040815115649.GA26259@elte.hu> <20040816022554.16c3c84a@mango.fruits.de> <1092622121.867.109.camel@krustophenia.net> <20040816023655.GA8746@elte.hu> <1092624221.867.118.camel@krustophenia.net> <20040816032806.GA11750@elte.hu> <20040816033623.GA12157@elte.hu> <1092627691.867.150.camel@krustophenia.net> <20040816034618.GA13063@elte.hu> <1092628493.810.3.camel@krustophenia.net>
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* Lee Revell <rlrevell@joe-job.com> wrote:

> I will try next with /dev/random disabled.  Don't most/many new
> machines have a hardware RNG that would eliminate the need for this
> code?

The C3 does have one IIRC, but do Intel CPUs have it too? Also, there's
the question of trust - how random it truly is. Is it a partly
pseudo-RNG masked via encryption? /dev/random i know is random, driven
by random timings of real disks and real network packets. The CPU's HRNG
is much more encapsulated and can only be blackbox-tested.

	Ingo