From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Sun, 19 Aug 2001 18:46:33 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Sun, 19 Aug 2001 18:46:23 -0400 Received: from mail.webmaster.com ([216.152.64.131]:36033 "EHLO shell.webmaster.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Sun, 19 Aug 2001 18:46:16 -0400 From: "David Schwartz" To: "Alex Bligh - linux-kernel" Cc: "Oliver Xymoron" , Subject: RE: Entropy from net devices - keyboard & IDE just as 'bad' [was Re: [PATCH] let Net Devices feed Entropy, updated (1/2)] Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 15:46:29 -0700 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2911.0) In-Reply-To: <483044230.998264308@[169.254.45.213]> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2479.0006 Importance: Normal Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > > To what level of accuracy do you think you can measure when > > interrupts > > occur? > Better than the necessary 1 jiffie on non-i386 platforms and some > i386 platforms. On those platforms, you simply can't have good entropy and still have user accounts on the box with the default hardware. Sorry, the hardware just doesn't permit it. You would have to set up some secure way to draw entropy off an external pool, there's just nothing else you can do. (I believe there are non-x87 platforms that have good timers, just not all of them.) DS