Re: Continuing /dev/random problems with 2.4

Robert Love
2002-02-01T16:47:25Z

On Fri, 2002-02-01 at 04:17, Ken Brownfield wrote:

> Robert Love did some /dev/random maintenance a while back, and his
> netdev patches are essential for low disk-activity systems. While his
> patches have helped the situation greatly, it appears that there is
> something in the random code that can cause extraction of entropy to
> permanently exhaust the pool. Some kind of issue when entropy is near
> zero at the time of a read?

Most of the useful fixes actually came in a large update from Andreas
Dilger. Perhaps he would have some insight, too.

Exhausting entropy to zero under high use is not uncommon (that is a
motivation for my netdev-random patch). What boggles me is why it does
not regenerate?

Robert