Question - seeding the hw pseudo random number generator

Corentin Labbe
2017-03-23T08:23:07Z

On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 09:28:58PM +0800, Herbert Xu wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 12:19:32PM +0530, PrasannaKumar Muralidharan wrote:
> >
> > AF_ALG interface for rng does have seeding support. I think hw_random
> > does not provide seeding support intentionally as I understand that
> > True RNG need not require seeding (please correct me if I am wrong).
>
> Yes. We should be converting PRNGs in hwrng over to algif_rng.
>

Problem with this conversion, a huge regression for user space.
Using hwrng is simple as cat /dev/hwrng.
Using algif_rng via AF_ALG is ... unusable for the moment.
Perhaps creating an user space tool (prng-tool which provide a cat /dev/hwrng replacement) is mandatory before any convertion.

Regards