From: Sven-Haegar Koch Subject: Re: [PATCH] random: add blocking facility to urandom Date: Thu, 8 Sep 2011 00:46:23 +0200 (CEST) Message-ID: References: <1314974248-1511-1-git-send-email-jarod@redhat.com> <1315429827.3576.61.camel@lappy> <4E67E396.702@redhat.com> <201109071743.16811.sgrubb@redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Cc: Jarod Wilson , Sasha Levin , Ted Ts'o , linux-crypto@vger.kernel.org, Matt Mackall , Neil Horman , Herbert Xu , Stephan Mueller , lkml To: Steve Grubb Return-path: Received: from mail.sdinet.de ([78.47.32.153]:34222 "EHLO mail.sdinet.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1757071Ab1IGW6J (ORCPT ); Wed, 7 Sep 2011 18:58:09 -0400 In-Reply-To: <201109071743.16811.sgrubb@redhat.com> Sender: linux-crypto-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Wed, 7 Sep 2011, Steve Grubb wrote: > On Wednesday, September 07, 2011 05:35:18 PM Jarod Wilson wrote: > > Another proposal that has been kicked around: a 3rd random chardev, > > which implements this functionality, leaving urandom unscathed. Some > > udev magic or a driver param could move/disable/whatever urandom and put > > this alternate device in its place. Ultimately, identical behavior, but > > the true urandom doesn't get altered at all. > > Right, and that's what I was trying to say is that if we do all that and switch out > urandom with something new that does what we need, what's the difference in just > patching the behavior into urandom and calling it a day? Its simpler, less fragile, > admins won't make mistakes setting up the wrong one in a chroot, already has the > FIPS-140 dressing, and is auditable. I as a 0815 admin would never want such a thing by default. I already replace /dev/random with /dev/urandom to keep stupid sshd from dying because there just is no entropy - I care more about all my services staying alive than about perfect random. c'ya sven-haegar -- Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead. - Ben F.