Re: [RFC][PATCH] Pseudo-random number generator

On Thu, 2006-12-07 at 16:06 +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:

On Friday 01 December 2006 14:19, Jan Glauber wrote:

quoted

I've chosen the char driver since it allows the user to decide which pseudo-random
numbers he wants to use. That means there is a new interface for the s390
PRNG, called /dev/prandom.

I would like to know if there are any objections, especially with the chosen device
name.

This may be a stupid question, but what is it _good_ for? My understanding is
that the crypt_s390_kmc() opcodes work in user mode as well as kernel mode, so
you should not need a character device at all, but maybe just a small tool
that spits prandom data to stdout.

Hm, why is /dev/urandom implemented in the kernel?

It could be done completely in user-space (like libica already does)
but I think having a device node where you can read from is the simplest
implementation. Also, if we can solve the security flaw we could use it
as replacement for /dev/urandom.

Jan