linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] drivers/net: remove network drivers' last few uses of IRQF_SAMPLE

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Date:	Fri, 16 May 2008 11:40:12 -0700
From:	"Kok, Auke" <auke-jan.h.kok@...el.com>
To:	Alan Cox <alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk>
CC:	Lennart Sorensen <lsorense@...lub.uwaterloo.ca>,
	Jeff Garzik <jeff@...zik.org>, Rick Jones <rick.jones2@...com>,
	"Brandeburg, Jesse" <jesse.brandeburg@...el.com>,
	Chris Peterson <cpeterso@...terso.com>, netdev@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] drivers/net: remove network drivers' last few uses of
 IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM

Alan Cox wrote:
>> So what is one to do if a few applications want to read from /dev/random
>> but you have no excellent source of entropy on the system?  Wait
>> forever?  
> 
> Yes.
> 
> If they don't need that level of security they can use /dev/urandom.
> Piping network randomness into /dev/urandom is probably quite sensible
> but not into /dev/random.

I remember Jesse telling that he had this very same experience while installing a
RH box on a headless system with a serial console - a box prompted the user to
rattle a keyboard in order for the ssh key generation to continue :)

you absolutely don't want to use urandom for that I assume, but if the system just
sits dead waiting for randomness, and you can't see the popup asking for some
entropy, you're pretty much screwed :)

Auke

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