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From: hpa@zytor.com (H. Peter Anvin)
To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: short read from /dev/urandom
Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2005 02:34:37 +0000 (UTC)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <cs9vft$412$1@terminus.zytor.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 41E833F4.8090800@redhat.com

Followup to:  <41E833F4.8090800@redhat.com>
By author:    Ulrich Drepper <drepper@redhat.com>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
> 
> The code in question comes from a crypto library which is in wide use 
> (http://www.cryptopp.com) and it is using urandom under this assumption. 
>   I fear there is quite a bit more code like this out there.  Changing 
> the ABI after the fact is no good and dangerous in this case.
> 
> I know this is making the device special, but I really think the 
> no-short-reads property should be perserved for urandom.
> 

Does *anything* have it, including files?

I think read() always has the option of returning a short read on
signal delivery.

What urandom has is a no-block guarantee, i.e. the behaviour should be
identical in the presense of the O_NONBLOCK flag, and select/poll
should always indicate that data can be read.

	-hpa

  parent reply	other threads:[~2005-01-15  2:35 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 16+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2005-01-14  4:54 short read from /dev/urandom Ulrich Drepper
2005-01-14  5:56 ` David Wagner
2005-01-14  6:54   ` Ulrich Drepper
2005-01-14 19:55     ` David Wagner
2005-01-14 19:10 ` Theodore Ts'o
2005-01-14 21:04   ` Ulrich Drepper
2005-01-14 23:21     ` Theodore Ts'o
2005-01-15  2:36       ` H. Peter Anvin
2005-01-16  2:51         ` Matt Mackall
2005-01-16  3:18           ` H. Peter Anvin
2005-01-15  2:34     ` H. Peter Anvin [this message]
2005-01-19 15:48     ` Pavel Machek
2005-01-16  2:44 ` Matt Mackall
2005-01-16  3:58   ` Ulrich Drepper
2005-01-16  4:58     ` Matt Mackall
2005-01-16 13:23     ` Andries Brouwer

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