Re: Standardizing an MSR or other hypercall to get an RNG seed?

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

 



On 09/19/2014 02:42 PM, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 11:30 AM, Christopher Covington
> <cov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> On 09/17/2014 10:50 PM, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
>>> Hi all-
>>>
>>> I would like to standardize on a very simple protocol by which a guest
>>> OS can obtain an RNG seed early in boot.
>>>
>>> The main design requirements are:
>>>
>>>  - The interface should be very easy to use.  Linux, at least, will
>>> want to use it extremely early in boot as part of kernel ASLR.  This
>>> means that PCI and ACPI will not work.
>>
>> How do non-virtual systems get entropy this early? RDRAND/Padlock? Truerand?
>> Could hypervisors and simulators simply make sure these work?
>>
> 
> If RDRAND is available, then Linux, at least, will use it.  The rest
> are too complicated for early use.  Linux on x86 plays some vaguely
> clever games with rdtsc and poking at the i8254 port.

I just wanted to check that it couldn't be as simple as giving one or both of
the timers random initial values.

Christopher

-- 
Employee of Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc.
Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. is a member of Code Aurora Forum,
hosted by the Linux Foundation.
_______________________________________________
Virtualization mailing list
Virtualization@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/virtualization




[Index of Archives]     [KVM Development]     [Libvirt Development]     [Libvirt Users]     [CentOS Virtualization]     [Netdev]     [Ethernet Bridging]     [Linux Wireless]     [Kernel Newbies]     [Security]     [Linux for Hams]     [Netfilter]     [Bugtraq]     [Yosemite Forum]     [MIPS Linux]     [ARM Linux]     [Linux RAID]     [Linux Admin]     [Samba]

  Powered by Linux