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From: Andreas Dilger <adilger@clusterfs.com>
To: Jean-Luc Cooke <jlcooke@certainkey.com>
Cc: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@osdl.org>,
	"David S. Miller" <davem@redhat.com>,
	Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
	"Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>,
	netdev@oss.sgi.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC] enhanced version of net_random()
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 12:59:56 -0600	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20040820185956.GV8967@schnapps.adilger.int> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20040820175952.GI5806@certainkey.com>

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On Aug 20, 2004  13:59 -0400, Jean-Luc Cooke wrote:
> Is there a reason why get_random_bytes() is unsuitable?
> 
> Keeping the number of PRNGs in the kernel to a minimum should a goal we can
> all share.

For some uses a decent PRNG is enough, and the overhead of get_random_bytes()
is much too high.  We've needed something like this for a long time (something
that gives decenly uniform numbers) and hacks to use useconds/cycles/etc do
not cut it.  I for one welcome a simple in-kernel interface to
e.g. get_urandom_bytes() (or net_random() as this is maybe inappropriately
called) that is only pseudo-random but fast and efficient.

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2resize/
http://members.shaw.ca/adilger/             http://members.shaw.ca/golinux/


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  parent reply	other threads:[~2004-08-20 18:59 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 17+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2004-08-12 17:48 [RFC] enhanced version of net_random() Stephen Hemminger
2004-08-12 19:48 ` David S. Miller
2004-08-13 18:51   ` Stephen Hemminger
2004-08-13 19:28     ` Andi Kleen
2004-08-16  6:27       ` David S. Miller
2004-08-12 20:02 ` Ben Greear
2004-08-20 17:59 ` Jean-Luc Cooke
2004-08-20 18:47   ` David S. Miller
2004-08-20 18:59   ` Andreas Dilger [this message]
2004-08-20 19:22     ` Richard B. Johnson
2004-08-20 19:48       ` David S. Miller
2004-08-20 19:53         ` Jean-Luc Cooke
2004-08-22 15:04         ` Andi Kleen
2004-08-23 17:05       ` Stephen Hemminger
2004-08-23 18:09         ` Richard B. Johnson
2004-08-20 21:24     ` Lee Revell
2004-08-20 23:55       ` Alan Cox

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