On Wed, Apr 13, 2022 at 6:56 AM Jason A. Donenfeld <Jason@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In the event that random_get_entropy() can't access a cycle counter or
similar, falling back to returning 0 is really not the best we can do.
Instead, at least calling random_get_entropy_fallback() would be
preferable, because that always needs to return _something_, even
falling back to jiffies eventually. It's not as though
random_get_entropy_fallback() is super high precision or guaranteed to
be entropic, but basically anything that's not zero all the time is
better than returning zero all the time.
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@xxxxxxxx>
Cc: Paul Walmsley <paul.walmsley@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Palmer Dabbelt <palmer@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Jason A. Donenfeld <Jason@xxxxxxxxx>
---
arch/riscv/include/asm/timex.h | 2 +-
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/arch/riscv/include/asm/timex.h b/arch/riscv/include/asm/timex.h
index 507cae273bc6..d6a7428f6248 100644
--- a/arch/riscv/include/asm/timex.h
+++ b/arch/riscv/include/asm/timex.h
@@ -41,7 +41,7 @@ static inline u32 get_cycles_hi(void)
static inline unsigned long random_get_entropy(void)
{
if (unlikely(clint_time_val == NULL))
Moving this check to get_cycles() implementation would eliminate the
RiscV implementation of random_get_entropy() if you follow my other
suggestion.
I guess there's some advantage to skipping a NULL check every time for
get_cycles(), but really the register read time will be much slower
than an added check.
- return 0;
+ return random_get_entropy_fallback();
return get_cycles();
}
#define random_get_entropy() random_get_entropy()
