Further investigations: if the whack-a-mole approach is desirable, perhaps many of those get_random_bytes calls should be converted to get_blocking_random_bytes. In that case, this commit, which removed this helpful API, should be reverted: commit c2719503f5e1e6213d716bb078bdad01e28ebcbf Author: Herbert Xu <herbert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Tue Jun 9 18:19:42 2015 +0800 random: Remove kernel blocking API This patch removes the kernel blocking API as it has been completely replaced by the callback API. Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu <herbert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> diff --git a/drivers/char/random.c b/drivers/char/random.c index a1576ed1d88e..d0da5d852d41 100644 --- a/drivers/char/random.c +++ b/drivers/char/random.c @@ -1265,18 +1265,6 @@ void get_random_bytes(void *buf, int nbytes) EXPORT_SYMBOL(get_random_bytes); /* - * Equivalent function to get_random_bytes with the difference that this - * function blocks the request until the nonblocking_pool is initialized. - */ -void get_blocking_random_bytes(void *buf, int nbytes) -{ - if (unlikely(nonblocking_pool.initialized == 0)) - wait_event(urandom_init_wait, nonblocking_pool.initialized); - extract_entropy(&nonblocking_pool, buf, nbytes, 0, 0); -} -EXPORT_SYMBOL(get_blocking_random_bytes); - -/*