In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Doug
Barton writes:
>On Thu, 26 Oct 2000, Ed Hall wrote:
>
>> How about skipping the "long, annoying failover process" altogether and
>> simply logging to the console that the entropy reseeding process was
>> incomplete? Forcing an indeterminate delay to gather entropy is more
>> than a little paternalistic.
>
> The problem is, it's going to block somewhere. If we don't
>"block" while creating the entropy, the first thing that needs random bits
>is going to block for real because /dev/random isn't going to have
>anything to feed it.
>
> We must come up with an entropy reseeding mechanism that has a
>reasonably high degree of success for a reasonably high number of cases.
I think the strategy here is to feed it as much as we can from the
kernel during device-probe/attach as possible.
I don't really care that much how good my random bits are right after
boot, but I do care about my machine coming up quickly.
Add a /etc/rc.conf knob which says
wait_until_entropy_collected=YES
which people who care a lot about randomness can set.
--
Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
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