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(I sent this with my non-list address first by mistake, so apologies |
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if it comes through twice). |
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On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 8:48 AM, Ed W <lists@××××××××××.com> wrote: |
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> I guess some patch to use network packets to seed the pool with randomness |
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> would also be useful, btu that's way beyond what I'm going to offer a patch |
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> for in the near future... |
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About two years ago I emailed the maintainer of the via_rhine network |
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driver, Roger Luethi, asking whether adding IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM to the |
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flags in its call to request_irq() would be appropriate or not. His |
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reply included: |
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"If you check the other network drivers, most don't do that. IIRC the |
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argument was that interrupts in network drivers can to some extent be |
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controlled from the outside, so they should not be used as a source for |
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randomness." |
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If you want to try it, it's an extremely simple change to your network |
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driver, along the lines of: |
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- rc = request_irq(rp->pdev->irq, &rhine_interrupt, |
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IRQF_SHARED, dev->name, |
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+ rc = request_irq(rp->pdev->irq, &rhine_interrupt, IRQF_SHARED |
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| IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM, dev->name, |
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He also suggested bringing it up on the lkml if I wanted, after |
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checking the archives. I did neither, but it's there as an option for |
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you. |
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Cheers, |
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Roger |
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