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From: daw@mozart.cs.berkeley.edu (David Wagner)
Newsgroups: isaac.lists.linux-kernel
Subject: Re: Continuing /dev/random problems with 2.4
Date: 2 Feb 2002 01:33:48 GMT
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Jeff Garzik  wrote:
>There actually used to be a timer function in i810_rng driver which
>directly added entropy to the pool.  batch_entropy_store was exported in
>order to do this.
>
>However, that was just the quick and dirty way.  You DO NOT want to do
>this in the kernel, because one must perform fitness tests on the random
>data before adding it to the kernel's /dev/[u]random entropy pool.
>Putting proper fitness tests into the kernel is just plain code bloat.

Hmm.  I don't quite follow your reasoning.  Does the kernel already
perform fitness tests on random data from other drivers?  I don't
think so.

The i810 rng seems much less prone to entropy failure than the data
currently collected from I/O events.  Why are fitness tests for it more
important than for the existing entropy sources that are currently in
the kernel?

What am I missing?
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