From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1758864AbYEMQtQ (ORCPT ); Tue, 13 May 2008 12:49:16 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1755405AbYEMQtB (ORCPT ); Tue, 13 May 2008 12:49:01 -0400 Received: from wa-out-1112.google.com ([209.85.146.176]:22359 "EHLO wa-out-1112.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755605AbYEMQtA (ORCPT ); Tue, 13 May 2008 12:49:00 -0400 Message-ID: Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 09:49:00 -0700 From: "Chris Peterson" To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: network devices: to IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM or not to IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org 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/