Re: [PATCH] crypto: testmgr - reinstate kconfig support for fast tests only

["Diederik de Haas" <didi.debian@cknow.org>]

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On Wed Jun 11, 2025 at 9:04 PM CEST, Eric Biggers wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 11, 2025 at 08:53:17PM +0200, Diederik de Haas wrote:
>> I was about to respond to your reply, but I guess this may be a better
>> fit for it. The TL;DR: version is this:
>> 
>> If you think distros shouldn't enable it, as you initially clearly
>> described and it seems to me you still think so, the right thing for
>> distros to do, is to disable those test. Which in turn means the fast
>> tests should not be reinstated (?).
>
> I mean, not enabling the tests in production is how it should be.
>
> But Fedora already enabled CRYPTO_SELFTESTS, apparently because of FIPS
> (https://gitlab.com/cki-project/kernel-ark/-/merge_requests/3886).

That is recent and there's at least 1 person I recognize as having
proper expertise in this matter ;-)

> You're right there doesn't seem to be an up-to-date bug for Debian
> (https://bugs.debian.org/599441 is old), so maybe my conclusion is premature.
>
> However, besides FIPS I think the problem is that the crypto/ philosophy is to

Another problem (IMO) is that a lot (?) of people (like myself) don't
(really) understand crypto and therefor rely on the description in the
Kconfig help text and make a choice based on that.
That's (one of) the reason(s) I was so happy with the clear text :-)

> throw untested and broken hardware drivers over the wall at users.  As long as

Only speaking for myself, my *assumption* is that crypto functionality
in hardware is/should be faster and would lessen the load on the CPU
(which with several SBCs seems really worthwhile).
But I don't have the knowledge to determine whether it's broken or not.
Unless there's a(n easy) tool for that (like 'rngtest' [1]).

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-rockchip/6425788.NZdkxuyfQg@bagend/
resulting in f.e.
5afdb98dcc55 ("arm64: dts: rockchip: Describe why is HWRNG disabled in RK356x base dtsi")

> that's the case, the self-tests do actually have some value in protecting users
> from those drivers, even though that's not how it should be.

Thanks for the additional info :-)

Diederik

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