On Sat, Jun 10, 2000 at 11:21:07PM +0200, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Sat, Jun 10, 2000 at 02:34:53PM +0200, Sune Kirkeby wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > In an attempt to (1) learn Hurd programming and (2) help out with the
> > development where I can, I have cooked up a port of the /dev/{,u}random
> > Linux driver for Hurd.
>
> That's certainly useful, however, it should probably not be based on the
> actual linux implementation. The linux implementation depends on entropy
> gathered by the kernel, which can't reliably collected in userspace, I think.
That's true, and I should probably have been a little more precise in my
wording, because it's more like I took the hashing and entropy pool
routines and ripped them out.
So, what I have is not at all specific to in-kernel entropy gathering.
> I think for a driver in userspace, it would be useful to take a look at:
>
> Jeff Bailey suggested:
>
> > > What I think would be a lovely project (Given a bored Sunday afternoon)
> > > would be to modify the Entropy Gathering Daemon
> > > (http://www.lothar.com/tech/crypto/ if you don't know of it) to talk to a
> > > translator over some /dev/random hook. It's written in PERL.
Going the other way (but coming to the same result) I have a egd-glue
program now, so you can have egd gather the entropy and have it
accessible via the device files provided by my translator.
There is one thing with the implementation that bothers me, though. The
data is hashed both by egd and by my entropy translator, which seems a
bit wasteful of cycles...
> Of course, this is a quite different project from what you did. A driver
> completely in userspace has much better chances to be used than a driver
> which requries a special gnumach, though. (Or, a driver completely in
> gnumach/oskit-gnumach).
Again, I was probably not very precise in my original wording, because
the translator I wrote is entirely user-space.
I have just uploaded a new version of the entropy translator, with the
egd-glue program mentioned. So, now there is a completely user-space
/dev/{,u}random driver for the Hurd.
Regards,
--
Sune Kirkeby | "Imagine, if you will, that there were no such
| thing as a hypothetical situation..."
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