Re: [PATCH v3 2/5] random,x86: Add arch_get_slow_rng_u64

H. Peter Anvin
2014-07-17T16:39:14Z

On 07/17/2014 03:33 AM, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 09:55:15PM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>> On 07/16/2014 05:03 PM, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
>>>>
>>> I meant that prandom isn't using rdrand for early seeding.
>>>
>>
>> We should probably fix that.
>
> It wouldn't hurt to explicitly use arch_get_random_long() in prandom,
> but it does use get_random_bytes() in early seed, and for CPU's with
> RDRAND present, we do use it in init_std_data() in
> drivers/char/random.c, so prandom is already getting initialized via
> an RNG (which is effectively a DRBG even if it doesn't pass all of
> NIST's rules) which is derived from RDRAND.
>

I assumed he was referring to before alternatives. Not sure if we use
prandom before that point, though.

-hpa