From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262796AbTJPKTt (ORCPT ); Thu, 16 Oct 2003 06:19:49 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262797AbTJPKTr (ORCPT ); Thu, 16 Oct 2003 06:19:47 -0400 Received: from bimba.bezeqint.net ([192.115.106.39]:26815 "EHLO bimba.bezeqint.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262796AbTJPKTo (ORCPT ); Thu, 16 Oct 2003 06:19:44 -0400 Message-ID: <3F8E70E0.7070000@users.sf.net> Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 12:20:16 +0200 From: Eli Billauer User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en, he MIME-Version: 1.0 To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Cc: Nick Piggin Subject: Re: [RFC] frandom - fast random generator module References: <3F8E552B.3010507@users.sf.net> <3F8E58A9.20005@cyberone.com.au> In-Reply-To: <3F8E58A9.20005@cyberone.com.au> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > > >> Frandom is the faster version of the well-known /dev/urandom random >> number generator. Not instead of, but rather as a supplement, when >> pseudorandom data is needed at high rate. Few tests so far show that >> frandom is 10-50 times faster than urandom. >> > > Without looking at the code, why should this be done in the kernel? I suppose you're asking why having a /dev/frandom device at all. Why not let everyone write their own little random generator (based upon well-known C functions) whenever random data is needed. There are plenty of handy things in the kernel, that could be done in userspace. /dev/zero is my favourite example, but I'm sure there are other cases where things were put in the kernel simply because people found them handy. Which is a good reason, if you ask me. Besides, it's quite easy to do something wrong with random numbers. By having a good source of random data, I suppose we can spare a lot of people the headache of getting their own user-space application right for the one-off thing they want to do. But it's really a matter of taste. That's why I bring up the subject here. Eli