On Wed, Dec 14, 2022 at 05:21:17PM +0100, Stanislaw Gruszka wrote: > On Wed, Dec 14, 2022 at 04:15:49PM +0100, Eric Dumazet wrote: > > On Wed, Dec 14, 2022 at 1:34 PM Stanislaw Gruszka > > <stanislaw.gruszka@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > > > On Mon, Dec 12, 2022 at 03:35:20PM +0100, Jason A. Donenfeld wrote: > > > > Please CC me on future revisions. > > > > > > > > As of 6.2, the prandom namespace is *only* for predictable randomness. > > > > There's no need to rename anything. So nack on this patch 1/5. > > > > > > It is not obvious (for casual developers like me) that p in prandom > > > stands for predictable. Some renaming would be useful IMHO. I disagree. pseudo-random has *always* menat "predictable". And the 'p' in prandom was originally "pseudo-random". In userspace, random(3) is also pseudo-random, and is ***utterly*** predictable. So the original use of prandom() was a bit more of an explicit nod to the fact that prandom is something which is inherently predictable. So I don't think it's needed to rename it, whether it's to "predictable_rng_prandom_u32", or "no_you_idiot_dont_you_dare_use_it_for_cryptographi_purposes_prandom_u32". I think we need to assume a certain base level of competence, especially for someone who is messing with security psensitive kernel code. If a developer doesn't know that a prng is predictable, that's probably the *least* of the sort of mistakes that they might make. - Ted
