From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "Kok, Auke" Subject: Re: [PATCH] drivers/net: remove network drivers' last few uses of IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM Date: Fri, 16 May 2008 11:40:12 -0700 Message-ID: <482DD50C.2070601@intel.com> 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> <20080516173610.GA27126@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> <20080516191125.46f59ad6@core> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Lennart Sorensen , Jeff Garzik , Rick Jones , "Brandeburg, Jesse" , Chris Peterson , netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org To: Alan Cox Return-path: Received: from mga11.intel.com ([192.55.52.93]:26603 "EHLO mga11.intel.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1758969AbYEPSl5 (ORCPT ); Fri, 16 May 2008 14:41:57 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20080516191125.46f59ad6@core> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Alan Cox wrote: >> 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? > > Yes. > > If they don't need that level of security they can use /dev/urandom. > Piping network randomness into /dev/urandom is probably quite sensible > but not into /dev/random. I remember Jesse telling that he had this very same experience while installing a RH box on a headless system with a serial console - a box prompted the user to rattle a keyboard in order for the ssh key generation to continue :) you absolutely don't want to use urandom for that I assume, but if the system just sits dead waiting for randomness, and you can't see the popup asking for some entropy, you're pretty much screwed :) Auke