Re: [PATCH v5 04/11] mips: use fallback for random_get_entropy() instead of just c0 random

Jason A. Donenfeld
2022-04-21T20:01:40Z

Hi Maciej,

On Thu, Apr 21, 2022 at 9:25 PM Maciej W. Rozycki <macro@orcam.me.uk> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 19 Apr 2022, Jason A. Donenfeld wrote:
>
> > For situations in which we don't have a c0 counter register available,
> > we've been falling back to reading the c0 "random" register, which is
> > usually bounded by the amount of TLB entries and changes every other
> > cycle or so. This means it wraps extremely often. We can do better by
> > combining this fast-changing counter with a potentially slower-changing
> > counter from random_get_entropy_fallback() in the more significant bits.
> > This commit combines the two, taking into account that the changing bits
> > are in a different bit position depending on the CPU model. In addition,
> > we previously were falling back to 0 for ancient CPUs that Linux does
> > not support anyway; remove that dead path entirely.
>
> Tested-by: Maciej W. Rozycki <macro@orcam.me.uk>
>
> I've pushed the algorithm through testing with a number of suitable
> systems:
>
> - an R2000A and an R3000A with no timer of any kind, only jiffies,
>
> - an R3400 with a chipset timer only,
>
> - an R4400SC with a usable buggy CP0 counter and a chipset timer,
>
> - a 5Kc with a good CP0 counter only,
>
> with no obvious issues spotted. Thank you for working on this!

Thanks for all the testing!

ThomasB - I think maybe you can re-"Acked-by" this now if you're on
board with the strategy here?

Jason