Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 8 Aug 2014 14:37:15 +0530 | From | Amit Shah <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 1/2] rngd: add udev rule to source from hwrng if virtio-rng present |
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On (Thu) 07 Aug 2014 [12:31:11], H. Peter Anvin wrote: > On 08/07/2014 06:08 AM, Amit Shah wrote: > > On KVM guests where the virtio-rng device is available, and set as the > > current rng, this udev rule will start rngd which will feed in the > > host-provided entropy to /dev/random. > > > > Signed-off-by: Amit Shah <amit.shah@redhat.com> > > --- > > 90-virtio-rng.rules | 1 + > > 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) > > create mode 100644 90-virtio-rng.rules > > > > diff --git a/90-virtio-rng.rules b/90-virtio-rng.rules > > new file mode 100644 > > index 0000000..07f2f9c > > --- /dev/null > > +++ b/90-virtio-rng.rules > > @@ -0,0 +1 @@ > > +KERNEL=="hw_random", ATTR{rng_current}=="virtio*", RUN+="/sbin/rngd -r /dev/hwrng" > > > > I'm not sure this is really right. rngd can receive input from a number > of sources, and I suspect it would be better to rngd to be started much > earlier and perhaps get sent a SIGHUP to reconfigure when a hw_random > device appears ... not just the virtio one.
Right - yea. Modern distros do start rngd by default (at least Fedora and RHEL do), so this does make sense.
But as you note below, not all distros may start rngd...
> Currently rngd exits if there is no daemon. There are a few ways to > deal with that: one is to run rngd on changes and leave a pid file > around; the rngd can try to signal the old rngd or launch itself; > another option would be to have a different rngd for each source.
Currently the kernel can only have one rng_current, which is a pity. So in the current case, rngd only needs one instance -- and it'll always accept stuff from /dev/hwrng and it doesn't matter if the rng_current is changed as long as there's some rng there.
> To > some degree the above is obsolete when we get khwrngd widely deployed, > but that is a new-kernel-only kind of thing.
Right - I'm wondering if any such changes as propsed here are now obsolted already by khwrngd?
Thanks,
Amit
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