Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 23:52:03 +0200 From: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk> To: Doug Barton <DougB@gorean.org> Cc: Ed Hall <edhall@weirdnoise.com>, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: entropy reseeding is totally broken Message-ID: <5033.972597123@critter> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 26 Oct 2000 14:44:29 PDT." <Pine.BSF.4.21.0010261442470.19481-100000@dt051n37.san.rr.com>
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In message <Pine.BSF.4.21.0010261442470.19481-100000@dt051n37.san.rr.com>, Doug Barton writes: >On Thu, 26 Oct 2000, Ed Hall wrote: > >> How about skipping the "long, annoying failover process" altogether and >> simply logging to the console that the entropy reseeding process was >> incomplete? Forcing an indeterminate delay to gather entropy is more >> than a little paternalistic. > > The problem is, it's going to block somewhere. If we don't >"block" while creating the entropy, the first thing that needs random bits >is going to block for real because /dev/random isn't going to have >anything to feed it. > > We must come up with an entropy reseeding mechanism that has a >reasonably high degree of success for a reasonably high number of cases. I think the strategy here is to feed it as much as we can from the kernel during device-probe/attach as possible. I don't really care that much how good my random bits are right after boot, but I do care about my machine coming up quickly. Add a /etc/rc.conf knob which says wait_until_entropy_collected=YES which people who care a lot about randomness can set. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 phk@FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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