From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753044Ab2GTVDk (ORCPT ); Fri, 20 Jul 2012 17:03:40 -0400 Received: from waste.org ([173.11.57.241]:55304 "EHLO waste.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752125Ab2GTVDj (ORCPT ); Fri, 20 Jul 2012 17:03:39 -0400 Message-ID: <1342818213.23136.584.camel@calx> Subject: Re: [PATCH] dmi: Feed DMI table to /dev/random driver From: Matt Mackall To: Tony Luck Cc: "Theodore Ts'o" , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, torvalds@linux-foundation.org, w@1wt.eu, ewust@umich.edu, zakir@umich.edu, greg@kroah.com, nadiah@cs.ucsd.edu, jhalderm@umich.edu, tglx@linutronix.de, davem@davemloft.net Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2012 16:03:33 -0500 In-Reply-To: <0107910@agluck-desktop.sc.intel.com> References: <0107910@agluck-desktop.sc.intel.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" X-Mailer: Evolution 3.2.2-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Fri, 2012-07-20 at 13:15 -0700, Tony Luck wrote: > Send the entire DMI (SMBIOS) table to the /dev/random driver to > help seed its pools. > > Signed-off-by: Tony Luck > --- > > This looks a useful addition to your /dev/random series. There are > lots of platform specific goodies in this table (BIOS version, system > serial number and UUID, count and version number of processors, DIMM > slot population and serial numbers, etc.) > > On the system I tested the patch on the table is 9866 bytes. Is it > OK to dump that much into add_device_randomness() in one shot? Yes, that's fine. We should also consider doing something similar with various bus enumerations (PCI, USB, SCSI) and hotplug, we might pick up similar goodies. Also, we should feed in the OF device tree on platforms that use it. -- Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.