Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 18:28:48 +0200 From: Maxim Sobolev <sobomax@FreeBSD.org> To: Paul Richards <paul@freebsd-services.co.uk> Cc: "Matthew N. Dodd" <winter@jurai.net>, Mark Murray <mark@grondar.za>, Matt Dillon <dillon@earth.backplane.com>, current@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Ethernet entropy harvesting seriously pessimizes performance Message-ID: <3AB23F3F.4DDDCC66@FreeBSD.org> References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0103122102030.54019-100000@sasami.jurai.net> <3AB23512.DB9D6F8D@freebsd-services.co.uk>
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Paul Richards wrote: > "Matthew N. Dodd" wrote: > > > > On Mon, 12 Mar 2001, Mark Murray wrote: > > > Lots of security minded people what _all_ the interrupt entropy > > > they can get, and this method gives them that while allowing others > > > to throttle the harvester back. > > > > Lots of -CURRENT users want to be able to use their systems to write code > > without tripping over /dev/random and friends. > > > > I hear lots of people objecting to this code and alot of handwaving in > > response. > > > > Choose reasonable defaults already. > > > > The -CURRENT cvs tree isn't the proper venue for doing crypto research. > > Well, I dunno about that. It dovetails into the thread in developers > about getting people to use FreeBSD for research and to my mind I think > -current probably is a legitimate place for research. As long as the > basic -current doctrine of not commiting totally non-functional code is > adhered to there's no reason why experimental code can't be tried out in > -current. You are missed point here. Doing research using FreeBSD is not the same as committing poorly designed and untested code into it, completely replacing previous satisfactory in the most cases subsystem. Developers usually can tolerate disturbances when some major redesign occurs, that in the long run would benefit the whole community (e.g. SMPng), but not the constant problems with not so important and hardly critical for 95% of users component as random number generator is. > If you don't like the problems that research cause you then -current > isn't what you should be running -- it's an old mantra that isn't > repeated enough these days. Most developers just have to use 5-current, because it is their development and reference platform. > Of course, I'd much prefer it if -current wasn't totally hosed as much > as it has been recently but random hasn't caused half the turmoil that > some other changes have so it's unfair to pick on it as a major problem. Saying "this is bad, but that was much worse" could not be an excuse for not doing it properly. -Maxim To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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