Hi Linus! AFAIK it's legit to bother you directly with issues like this one? I see certifications as the mere messengers here which tell us that our /dev/random is technologically outdated. Input entropy amounts are guesstimated in advance, obviously much too conservatively, compiled in and never checked thereafter; the whitening is done using some home- grown hash function derivative and other non-cryptographic, non-standard operations. All of this does not affect the Linux kernel directly, it will compile happily, and will run smoothly with all given crypto apps. Only new crypto keys are generated slower than necessary or, much worse, might contain less entropy than required because something broke down unnoticed. In that case, problems would arise only much later, but in the real world and with much graver impact. I would rather like to see the Linux /dev/random being reliable, whether certified or not. If it provided that reliable entropy fast that would be even cooler. If it was at least possible to get approval from a standardization body (without forcing this onto all users, of course) that would be optimal. Meanwhile there's quite a maintenance backlog; minor fixes are pending, medium-sized cleanups are ignored and major patch sets to add the missing features are not even discussed. (I'm deliberately not including links here to avoid excessive finger pointing.) I'd like to believe that Ted is too busy working on ext4, but, especially on explicit request, a "hold on, I'm busy, will get at it later" or "right, someone wants to take over?" would be appropriate IMHO. It is also not helpful to object to or ignore all changes which might benefit certifications just for that sole reason and because of personal aversion. No reply at all yields exactly the same result as having no maintainer at all, hence the subject. Could you please try to get a definite answer from him? I know there is at least one person (probably more) with enough enthusiasm and expertise who would happily take over, should that turn out to be a problem. Thanks, Torsten
