Re: Continuing /dev/random problems with 2.4

David Wagner
2002-02-02T01:36:28Z

Jeff Garzik wrote:
>There actually used to be a timer function in i810_rng driver which
>directly added entropy to the pool. batch_entropy_store was exported in
>order to do this.
>
>However, that was just the quick and dirty way. You DO NOT want to do
>this in the kernel, because one must perform fitness tests on the random
>data before adding it to the kernel's /dev/[u]random entropy pool.
>Putting proper fitness tests into the kernel is just plain code bloat.

Hmm. I don't quite follow your reasoning. Does the kernel already
perform fitness tests on random data from other drivers? I don't
think so.

The i810 rng seems much less prone to entropy failure than the data
currently collected from I/O events. Why are fitness tests for it more
important than for the existing entropy sources that are currently in
the kernel?

What am I missing?