From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Lennart Sorensen) Subject: Re: [PATCH] drivers/net: remove network drivers' last few uses of IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM Date: Fri, 16 May 2008 13:36:10 -0400 Message-ID: <20080516173610.GA27126@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> References: <20080515142154.0595e475@core> <36D9DB17C6DE9E40B059440DB8D95F52052D71BB@orsmsx418.amr.corp.intel.com> <482C7B18.6060003@garzik.org> <482C7E53.3050300@hp.com> <482C8184.2030906@garzik.org> <482C8550.5000909@intel.com> <482C8D4D.3040702@garzik.org> <20080516132107.GA11304@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> <20080516161029.44ded734@core> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: Jeff Garzik , "Kok, Auke" , Rick Jones , "Brandeburg, Jesse" , Chris Peterson , netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org To: Alan Cox Return-path: Received: from caffeine.csclub.uwaterloo.ca ([129.97.134.17]:49609 "EHLO caffeine.csclub.uwaterloo.ca" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752005AbYEPRgL (ORCPT ); Fri, 16 May 2008 13:36:11 -0400 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20080516161029.44ded734@core> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 04:10:29PM +0100, Alan Cox wrote: > Ethernet is observable so ethernet isn't entropy. There is no "anything > else" here -> there is no *anything* So what is one to do if a few applications want to read from /dev/random but you have no excellent source of entropy on the system? Wait forever? I think ethernet interrupts are better than nothing, and I really doubt that someone would be able to predict what the entropy generated would be in practice. If you have that good access to the physical network, then probably have physical access to the system itself, in which case it is all irrelevant. -- Len Sorensen