lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2005]   [Jan]   [14]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
Date
From
SubjectRe: short read from /dev/urandom
Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> What do you think? Does gcc -pg calls sigaction with SA_RESTART, to
> avoid changing the behaviour of the programs that it is profiling?

Profiling certainly uses SA_RESTART. But this was just one possible
problem case.

I'm concerned that there is isgnificant code out there relying on the
no-short-read promise. And perhaps more importantly, other
implementations promise the same.

The code in question comes from a crypto library which is in wide use
(http://www.cryptopp.com) and it is using urandom under this assumption.
I fear there is quite a bit more code like this out there. Changing
the ABI after the fact is no good and dangerous in this case.

I know this is making the device special, but I really think the
no-short-reads property should be perserved for urandom.

--
➧ Ulrich Drepper ➧ Red Hat, Inc. ➧ 444 Castro St ➧ Mountain View, CA ❖
[unhandled content-type:application/pgp-signature]
\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2005-03-22 14:09    [W:0.132 / U:1.296 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site