network devices: to IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM or not to IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM?

["Chris Peterson" <cpeterso@cpeterso.com>]

Should network devices be allowed to contribute entropy to /dev/random?

This issue has been discussed before, but does not seem to have been
settled: some net drivers [1] use IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM when calling
request_irq(), but the vast majority do not. It seems like all net
drivers should follow the same entropy paranoia policy (whether that
is all net drivers should use IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM, no net drivers, or a
compile-time option).

Robert Love wrote a patch that added such a compile-time option,
CONFIG_NET_RANDOM (though I believe he stopped maintaining it in
2004). [2]

chris

[1] net drivers that use IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM:

drivers/net/3c523.c
drivers/net/3c527.c
drivers/net/atlx/atl1.c
drivers/net/cris/eth_v10.c
drivers/net/ibmlana.c
drivers/net/macb.c
drivers/net/mv643xx_eth.c
drivers/net/netxen/netxen_nic_main.c
drivers/net/niu.c
drivers/net/qla3xxx.c
drivers/net/tg3.c
drivers/net/xen-netfront.c

[2] http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/rml/netdev-random/