linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v3 0/3] Add support for architectural random number generator

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Message-ID: <20110805120033.GA3967@gondor.apana.org.au>
Date:	Fri, 5 Aug 2011 20:00:33 +0800
From:	Herbert Xu <herbert@...dor.apana.org.au>
To:	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>
Cc:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
	Fenghua Yu <fenghua.yu@...el.com>,
	Matt Mackall <mpm@...enic.com>, Theodore Ts'o <tytso@....edu>,
	Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@...ox.com>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	Arjan van de Ven <arjan@...ux.intel.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 0/3] Add support for architectural random number
	generator

On Sun, Jul 31, 2011 at 02:26:53PM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> This version of the patchset uses inlines with alternatives as
> proposed by Linus.  In order to avoid the issue of "random" vs
> "urandom", this hooks into *only* the kernel consumer interfaces
> get_random_bytes() and get_random_int(); this means that legacy users
> of /dev/urandom in userspace will not get direct use RDRAND, but those
> can be eventually converted to using RDRAND directly in userspace.
> 
> We can, of course, still both pools randomness via rngd or a future
> in-kernel mechanism as proposed by Matt.
> 
> Since there was a minor amount of confusion I want to clarify: RDRAND
> architecturally has weaker security guarantees than the documented
> interface for /dev/random, so we can't just replace all users of
> extract_entropy() with RDRAND.
> 
> Git tree also available:
> 
> git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/hpa/linux-rdrand.git rdrand-3
> 
> Again, for technical documentation see:
> 
> http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/download-the-latest-bull-mountain-software-implementation-guide/

FWIW these patches look good to me and I'm happy to take them
if Linus doesn't merge them directly.

Thanks,
-- 
Email: Herbert Xu <herbert@...dor.apana.org.au>
Home Page: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/
PGP Key: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/pubkey.txt
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