Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 14 Jan 2005 13:04:52 -0800 | From | Ulrich Drepper <> | Subject | Re: short read from /dev/urandom |
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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] | |