lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2008]   [May]   [16]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
Date
From
SubjectRe: [PATCH] drivers/net: remove network drivers' last few uses of IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM
Alan Cox wrote:
>> So what is one to do if a few applications want to read from /dev/random
>> but you have no excellent source of entropy on the system? Wait
>> forever?
>
> Yes.
>
> If they don't need that level of security they can use /dev/urandom.
> Piping network randomness into /dev/urandom is probably quite sensible
> but not into /dev/random.

I remember Jesse telling that he had this very same experience while installing a
RH box on a headless system with a serial console - a box prompted the user to
rattle a keyboard in order for the ssh key generation to continue :)

you absolutely don't want to use urandom for that I assume, but if the system just
sits dead waiting for randomness, and you can't see the popup asking for some
entropy, you're pretty much screwed :)

Auke



\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2008-05-16 20:45    [W:0.146 / U:1.276 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site