Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 15 May 2008 18:27:41 -0400 | From | Theodore Tso <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH] drivers/net: remove network drivers' last few uses of IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM |
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On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 06:04:04PM -0400, Jeff Garzik wrote: >> I have seen embedded systems with zero entropy, and dubious entropy might >> there be better than no entropy at all. >> Or am I wrong on the latter? > > It's also relevant to the discussion to note that input data to kernel > devrandom is mixed, and we can control the amount of "credit" applied to > incoming entropy.
Sure, and one possible thing to do is to simply always input the interrupt information to the random number generator, but give it a "entropy credit" of 0. That has the net result of potentially improving the entropy found in /dev/random and /dev/urandom, but not necessarily compromising /dev/random, since /dev/random's output is throttled by the entropy estimate.
The only cost of doing this would be the overhead in sending the information into the entropy pool.
- Ted
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