linux-kernel - Re: entropy gathering (was Re: Why does reading from /dev/urandom deplete entropy so much?)

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Date:	Sat, 8 Dec 2007 21:42:39 +0100
From:	Willy Tarreau <w@....eu>
To:	Jeff Garzik <jeff@...zik.org>
Cc:	Matt Mackall <mpm@...enic.com>, Theodore Tso <tytso@....edu>,
	Mike McGrath <mmcgrath@...hat.com>,
	Jon Masters <jonathan@...masters.org>,
	Alan Cox <alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
	Ray Lee <ray@...rabbit.org>, Adrian Bunk <bunk@...nel.org>,
	Marc Haber <mh+linux-kernel@...schlus.de>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, hmh@...ian.org
Subject: Re: entropy gathering (was Re: Why does reading from /dev/urandom deplete entropy so much?)

On Sat, Dec 08, 2007 at 02:36:33PM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> 
> 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.

I remember having installed openssh on an AIX machines years ago, and
being amazed by the number of sources it collected entropy from. Simple
commands such as "ifconfig -a", "netstat -i" and "du -a", "ps -ef", "w"
provided a lot of entropy.

Regards,
Willy

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