Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752279AbbEDKWS (ORCPT ); Mon, 4 May 2015 06:22:18 -0400 Received: from mail-ig0-f181.google.com ([209.85.213.181]:36983 "EHLO mail-ig0-f181.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751344AbbEDKWF (ORCPT ); Mon, 4 May 2015 06:22:05 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <1551132.jNO2hp8j9J@tachyon.chronox.de> References: <1626703.0h1HzJAx4d@tachyon.chronox.de> <1551132.jNO2hp8j9J@tachyon.chronox.de> Date: Mon, 4 May 2015 06:22:04 -0400 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 2/6] random: Async and sync API for accessing kernel_pool From: Sandy Harris To: Stephan Mueller Cc: Herbert Xu , Paul Bolle , Andreas Steffen , "Theodore Ts'o" , LKML , linux-crypto@vger.kernel.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 846 Lines: 18 On Sun, May 3, 2015 at 11:33 AM, Stephan Mueller wrote: > The kernel_pool is intended to be the in-kernel equivalent to the > blocking_pool, i.e. requests for random data may be blocked if > insufficient entropy is present. I cannot see any reason this would be useful, let alone necessary. Of course /dev/random should block and it seems to me there is a good argument for making both /dev/urandom and get_random_bytes() block until there is emough entropy to seed them well. For everything else, though, a properly seeded PRNG seems adequate so there is no reason to block. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/