Re: [v3 PATCH] hwrng: core - Remove add_early_randomness

Jarkko Sakkinen
2024-05-23T10:02:10Z

On Thu May 23, 2024 at 12:53 PM EEST, Jarkko Sakkinen wrote:
> On Thu May 23, 2024 at 7:49 AM EEST, Herbert Xu wrote:
> > On Wed, May 22, 2024 at 03:53:23PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > >
> > > That said, looking at the code in question, there are other oddities
> > > going on. Even the "we found a favorite new rng" case looks rather
> > > strange. The thread we use - nice and asynchronous - seems to sleep
> > > only if the randomness source is emptied.
> > >
> > > What if you have a really good source of hw randomness? That looks
> > > like a busy loop to me, but hopefully I'm missing something obvious.
> >
> > Yes that does look strange. So I dug up the original patch at
> >
> > https://lore.kernel.org/all/20140317165012.GC1763@lst.de/
> >
> > and therein lies the answer. It's relying on random.c to push back
> > when the amount of new entropy exceeds what it needs. IOW we will
> > sleep via add_hwgenerator_randomness when random.c decides that
> > enough is enough. In fact the rate is much less now compared to
> > when the patch was first applied.
>
> Just throwing something because came to mind, not a serious suggestion.
>
> In crypto_larval_lookup I see statements like this:
>
> request_module("crypto-%s", name);
>
> You could potentially bake up a section/table to vmlinux which would
> have entries like:
>
> "module name", 1/0
>
> '1' would mean built-in. Then for early randomness use only stuff
> that is built-in.
>
> Came to mind from arch/x86/realmode for which I baked in a table
> for relocation (this was a collaborative work with H. Peter Anvin
> in 2012 to make trampoline code relocatable but is still a legit
> example to do such shenanigans in a subystem).

This could be even parameter in __request_module() itself e.g.

int __request_module(bool wait, bool builtin_only, const char *fmt, ...);

And would not matter which initcall layer we are running at.

BR, Jarkko