On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 2:28 PM, Theodore Ts'o <tytso@xxxxxxx> wrote: > On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 01:35:15PM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote: >> >> Can we please have a mode in which getrandom(2) can neither block nor >> fail? If that gets added, then this can replace things like AT_RANDOM. > > AT_RANDOM has been around for a long time; it's not something we can > remove. I'm not suggesting removing AT_RANDOM. To the contrary, I'm suggesting that libraries that need to seed some kind of non-cryptographic, non-security-related RNG could use getrandom(2) with appropriate flags rather than screwing around with getpid, clock_gettime, etc. For example: unsigned int seed; getrandom(&seed, sizeof(seed), GRND_BEST_EFFORT); /* Never fails on new enough kernels */ srand(seed); No error checking, no weird cases, and if the RNG isn't well seeded, then I tried my best. --Andy -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-crypto" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
