Re: /dev/random often empty

["Steven M. Bellovin" <smb%cs.columbia.edu@localhost>]

On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:19:51 -0400
Thor Lancelot Simon <tls%rek.tjls.com@localhost> wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 20, 2007 at 09:44:59AM -0400, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> >
> > I've noticed similar problems.  I wonder if there should be a
> > pseudo-device which draws entropy from the dom0.  (Dom0 has an
> > emulated crypto device, but from the man page it doesn't include a
> > random number generator.)
> 
> I don't understand.  "An emulated crypto device"?  I think you mean
> swcrypto, but why is it relevant?

I see 

crypto: assign driver 0, flags 2
crypto: driver 0 registers alg 1 flags 0 maxoplen 0
crypto: driver 0 registers alg 2 flags 0 maxoplen 0
crypto: driver 0 registers alg 3 flags 0 maxoplen 0
crypto: driver 0 registers alg 4 flags 0 maxoplen 0
crypto: driver 0 registers alg 5 flags 0 maxoplen 0
crypto: driver 0 registers alg 17 flags 0 maxoplen 0
crypto: driver 0 registers alg 6 flags 0 maxoplen 0
crypto: driver 0 registers alg 7 flags 0 maxoplen 0
crypto: driver 0 registers alg 15 flags 0 maxoplen 0
crypto: driver 0 registers alg 8 flags 0 maxoplen 0
crypto: driver 0 registers alg 16 flags 0 maxoplen 0
crypto: driver 0 registers alg 9 flags 0 maxoplen 0
crypto: driver 0 registers alg 10 flags 0 maxoplen 0
crypto: driver 0 registers alg 13 flags 0 maxoplen 0
crypto: driver 0 registers alg 14 flags 0 maxoplen 0
crypto: driver 0 registers alg 11 flags 0 maxoplen 0
crypto: driver 0 registers alg 18 flags 0 maxoplen 0

in dmesg.  I'd assumed that it was emulating a standard crypto board.
> 
>



                --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb