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Date: Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:40:54 -0700
From: Sam Leffler <sam@freebsd.org>
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Subject: Re: What is cryptosoft0?
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Ulrich Spoerlein wrote:
> Hi,
>
> today I discovered the following dmesg line on my laptop:
>
> cryptosoft0: <software crypto> on motherboard
>
> and I've not seen this one before, so: what is cryptosoft and should I
> care?
>
> I could imagine it's a pseudo-device by crypto(9) so the API is the same
> whether crypto hardware is installed or not.
>
> Anyway, I think a manpage link/update would be in order:
>
> % man -k cryptosoft
> cryptosoft: nothing appropriate
>
>   

It is what you suggest; a device associated with s/w crypto support.  It 
was created so crypto requests can be submitted specifically to it 
(instead of a h/w device).  This is currently used only for testing but 
the intent was also to use it when doing load-balancing and similar work.

    Sam