Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753459AbXLHTh3 (ORCPT ); Sat, 8 Dec 2007 14:37:29 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751624AbXLHThW (ORCPT ); Sat, 8 Dec 2007 14:37:22 -0500 Received: from srv5.dvmed.net ([207.36.208.214]:37754 "EHLO mail.dvmed.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751502AbXLHThV (ORCPT ); Sat, 8 Dec 2007 14:37:21 -0500 Message-ID: <475AF241.5000809@garzik.org> Date: Sat, 08 Dec 2007 14:36:33 -0500 From: Jeff Garzik User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.9 (X11/20071115) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Matt Mackall , Theodore Tso CC: Mike McGrath , Jon Masters , Alan Cox , Ray Lee , Adrian Bunk , Marc Haber , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, hmh@debian.org Subject: entropy gathering (was Re: Why does reading from /dev/urandom deplete entropy so much?) References: <4755C423.60907@redhat.com> <20071204221525.GG19691@waste.org> <4755D350.1080801@redhat.com> <20071204223345.GJ19691@waste.org> <4756B50B.3060100@redhat.com> <20071205144934.GL7259@thunk.org> <1197099477.20786.149.camel@perihelion> <20071208173204.GI17037@thunk.org> <475AD585.7020908@redhat.com> <20071208174908.GJ17037@thunk.org> <20071208181525.GL19691@waste.org> In-Reply-To: <20071208181525.GL19691@waste.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: -4.4 (----) X-Spam-Report: SpamAssassin version 3.1.9 on srv5.dvmed.net summary: Content analysis details: (-4.4 points, 5.0 required) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 919 Lines: 26 As an aside... Speaking as the maintainer rng-tools, which is the home of the hardware RNG entropy gathering daemon... I wish somebody (not me) would take rngd and several other projects, and combine them into a single actively maintained "entropy gathering" package. IMO entropy gathering has been a long-standing need for headless network servers (and now virtual machines). In addition to rngd for hardware RNGs, I've been daemons out there that gather from audio and video sources (generally open wires/channels with nothing plugged in), thermal sources, etc. There is a lot of entropy that could be gathered via userland, if you think creatively. Jeff -- 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/