Re: [PATCH 1/2] add helper for highmem checks

H. Peter Anvin
2013-02-11T22:47:29Z

On 02/11/2013 02:34 PM, Borislav Petkov wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 11:44:12AM -0800, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>> Oh, craptastic. X used to hash /dev/mem to get a random seed. It
>> should have stopped that long ago, and used /dev/[u]random.
>
> That's because debian still has this WINGs window manager which hasn't
> seen any new releases since 2005: http://voins.program.ru/wdm/ and I'm
> using it because I don't want the pompous crap of the other display
> managers.
>
> But this one uses /dev/mem as a randomFile only by default - there's a
> configuration variable DisplayManager.randomFile which can be pointed
> away from /dev/mem so that's easily fixable.
>
> Mind you, I wouldnt've caught the issue if I wasn't using this ancient
> thing in its default settings :o).
>

The X server itself used to do that. Are you saying that wdm is a
*privileged process*?

-hpa