![]() | |||||||||||||
Messages in this thread |
David McCullough wrote: > Jivin Jeff Garzik lays it down ... > >>On Thu, Mar 24, 2005 at 02:27:08PM +1000, David McCullough wrote: >> >>>Hi all, >>> >>>Here is a small patch for 2.6.11 that adds a routine: >>> >>> add_true_randomness(__u32 *buf, int nwords); >>> >>>so that true random number generator device drivers can add a entropy >>>to the system. Drivers that use this can be found in the latest release >>>of ocf-linux, an asynchronous crypto implementation for linux based on >>>the *BSD Cryptographic Framework. >>> >>> http://ocf-linux.sourceforge.net/ >>> >>>Adding this can dramatically improve the performance of /dev/random on >>>small embedded systems which do not generate much entropy. >> >>We've already had hardware RNG support for a while now. >> >>No kernel patching needed. > > > Are you talking about /dev/hw_random ? If not then sorry I didn't see it :-( > > On a lot of the small systems I work on, /dev/random is completely > unresponsive, and all the apps use /dev/random, not /dev/hw_random. > > Would you suggest making /dev/random point to /dev/hw_random then ? All the apps are supposed to use /dev/random, so that's correct. For Hardware RNGs, userspace rngd daemon obtains entropy, checks it (mainly checking for hardware failures), and then stuffs entropy into the kernel random device. http://sf.net/projects/gkernel/ On the "to do" list is making rngd directly generate entropy use 'xstore' on VIA CPUs, rather than going kernel -> userland -> kernel. Also, there are other entropy daemons floating about. I think there is one that obtains noise from an audio device. Jeff - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/ | ||||||||||||
| Last update: 2005-04-06 13:30 [from the cache] ©2003-2008 | |||||||||||||