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From: henrique <henrique@cyclades.com>
Reply-To: henrique@cyclades.com
Organization: Cyclades Corporation
Subject: Problem with random.c and PPC
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 16:10:02 +0000
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Hi Andreas !!!

You've got the point. My system is diskless, keyboardless and mouseless
therefore I will never get randomness without the patch you talked about.

BTW, does anyone know where I can found the patch to get randomness from the 
network cards interrupt ?

regards
Henrique

On Thursday 15 August 2002 06:25 pm, Andreas Dilger wrote:
> On Aug 15, 2002  15:14 +0000, henrique wrote:
> > Hello !!!
> >
> > I am trying to use a program (ipsec newhostkey) that uses the random
> > device provided by the linux-kernel. In a x86 machine the program works
> > fine but when I tried to run the program in a PPC machine it doesn't
> > work.
> >
> > Looking carefully I have discovered that the problem is in the driver
> > random.c. When the program tries to read any amount of data it locks and
> > never returns. It happens because the variable
> > "random_state->entropy_count" is always zero, that is, any random number
> > is generated at all !!!??.
> >
> > Does anyone know anything about this problem ? Any sort of help is very
> > welcomed.
>
> Maybe the PPC keyboard/mouse drivers do not add randomness?  You should
> also get randomness from disk I/O.  If your PPC system is diskless,
> mouseless, and keyboardless, there is also a patch for 2.4 which allows
> you to get randomness from network card interrupts, which is good enough
> for all but the most incredibly paranoid people.
>
> Cheers, Andreas

--

-------------------------------------------------------

-- 
---
Henrique Gobbi
Software Engineer
+55 11 50333339
Cyclades Corporation - The Leader in Linux Connectivity
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