Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Mon, 9 Sep 2002 16:11:55 -0400 | From | Kent Borg <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH] (0/4) Entropy accounting fixes |
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On Mon, Sep 09, 2002 at 02:57:34PM -0500, Oliver Xymoron wrote: > > Why not use the power-on state of DRAM as a source of initial pool > > entropy? > > There's actually not a lot there, and what is there is not random, but > rather a rapidly fading "ghost" of what was there last.
Which means it is not completely predictable, which means there is going to be some entropy in there...
> And for most folks, this gets wiped by POST or the kernel long > before the RNG gets its hands on it.
Well now, *that's* a pain.
But for us embedded folks who control our boot ROM there is the potential to grab some entropy from that melting ghost.
> Nonetheless, there's no reason not to take whatever state we get > when we allocate our pool. Amusingly, the current code needlessly > zeroes out its pool before using it - twice! I've already fixed this > in my patches.
Perfect! So if some embedded-types do manage to dig up some entropy from the end/beginning of the world, we will have a place to put it where it will be put to use. Cool.
Thanks,
-kb, the Kent who suggests a comment left in that code might prevent someone from "fixing" it at a later date. - 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/
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