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

Jarkko Sakkinen
2024-05-23T09:53:10Z

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).

BR, Jarkko