Re: [PATCH] random: add blocking facility to urandom

Sven-Haegar Koch
2011-09-07T22:58:10Z

On Wed, 7 Sep 2011, Steve Grubb wrote:

> On Wednesday, September 07, 2011 05:35:18 PM Jarod Wilson wrote:
> > Another proposal that has been kicked around: a 3rd random chardev,
> > which implements this functionality, leaving urandom unscathed. Some
> > udev magic or a driver param could move/disable/whatever urandom and put
> > this alternate device in its place. Ultimately, identical behavior, but
> > the true urandom doesn't get altered at all.
>
> Right, and that's what I was trying to say is that if we do all that and switch out
> urandom with something new that does what we need, what's the difference in just
> patching the behavior into urandom and calling it a day? Its simpler, less fragile,
> admins won't make mistakes setting up the wrong one in a chroot, already has the
> FIPS-140 dressing, and is auditable.

I as a 0815 admin would never want such a thing by default.

I already replace /dev/random with /dev/urandom to keep stupid sshd from
dying because there just is no entropy - I care more about all my
services staying alive than about perfect random.

c'ya
sven-haegar

--
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
- Ben F.