linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v5] x86/setup: Allow passing RNG seeds via e820 setup table

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Date:   Fri, 01 Jul 2022 11:52:03 -0700
From:   "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>
To:     "Jason A. Donenfeld" <Jason@...c4.com>
CC:     tglx@...utronix.de, mingo@...hat.com, bp@...en8.de,
        dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com, x86@...nel.org,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v5] x86/setup: Allow passing RNG seeds via e820 setup table

On July 1, 2022 11:42:03 AM PDT, "Jason A. Donenfeld" <Jason@...c4.com> wrote:
>Hi Peter,
>
>On Fri, Jul 01, 2022 at 11:25:49AM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>> Please correct the incredibly confusing title of this patch.
>> 
>> The setup_data linked list has nothing to do with memory types (e820),
>> except that memory types is one kind of data that can be passed on by
>> this mechanism. This title makes it sound like you are passing random
>> data in as a memory type, which could make some bizarre sense if it
>> were, say, some kind of ring buffer preconfigured by the BIOS/VMM/boot
>> loader to be continually overwritten with new random data.
>
>Yea that is pretty confusing. Alright, I'll retitle that to something
>like:
>
>    x86/setup: Allow passing RNG seeds via setup data
>
>Hopefully that matches more, considering the function that does the work
>is called "parse_setup_data".
>
>(I'll wait some more time before posting yet another v+1 with that
>change, in case others have more feedback.)
>
>Jason

We usually refer to it as setup_data (with the underscore) to indicate that it is a name and not a description.