Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Tue, 14 May 1996 16:27:53 +0200 (MET DST) | From | Ingo Molnar <> | Subject | Re: CONFIG_RANDOM option for 1.99.2 |
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On Tue, 14 May 1996, Martin.Dalecki wrote:
> On Mon, 13 May 1996, Theodore Ts'o wrote: > > > The original reason I didn't provide a CONFIG_RANDOM was because I > > wanted security-oriented applications (i.e., Netscape, PGP, Kerberos, > > etc.) to be able to assume that if they were on Linux, /dev/linux would > > always be present. Good, secure numbers are absolutely vital for > > Do You really think that they will be aware of such an Linux *SPECIFIC* > animal?
the random driver is cool and well implemented, and it has a >minimal< interface. Why not use it? We are not talking about a 10000 functions API.
> > The random driver also isn't all that big, and the overhead of the > > add_XXX_randomness() calls were designed to be as small as possible. > > That's compleatly wrong!! It is now about 16KBytes. More than the floppy
note that good random numbers are/will be crutial for future networking. Why not a bit of testing. Or do you want to send your credit card number mangled with standard libc srand() ? =)
btw, libc should use this interface IMHO, in some way, thus applications using libc *rand* functions could be enhanced.
-- mingo
ps. the Linux entry from the NSA bible:
Linux: the OS with blocking /dev/random
=B-)
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