Re: [PATCH v2 25/25] crypto: ansi_cprng - If non-deterministic, don't buffer old output

On Mon, Dec 08, 2014 at 11:43:13AM -0500, George Spelvin wrote:

quoted

Wait, I'm confused. You mention in this note that this is an RFC patch, but not
anywhere else in the series.  Are you proposing this for inclusion or not?

Er, in the 0/25, I mentioned that I put the least certain stuff last,
and in particular I wasn't sure if the the last three patches were wanted
or not:

quoted

quoted

Pending issues:
* Is non-deterministic mode (last three patches) wanted?

I certainly wouldn't be unhappy if they went in, but with the comment
clarification just before, I wouldn't be unhappy if they didn't, either.

They're "If we wanted to do this, this is how it could be done.  Is this
something we want to do?"

Sorry if my motivations are confusing.  I did indeed start with wanting

Not your motivations, just the posting mechanics.  If you just want to discuss a
patch, and aren't yet proposing it for inclusion, you should put RFC in the
prefix of every patch header.

to add the seeding because I misunderstood the comments: I thought
this was claiming to be X9.31 *and* I haven't seen the later versions
of the standaed (which you have) that back off on the requirements for
the DT[] vector.

Since you've patiently explained both of those to me, I'm more interested
in the other, more generic code cleanups.

You also sent me two detailed explanations of the consequences of making
the generator non-determinsitic in a way that gave me a general impression
of disliking of the idea.  So I've been weaning myself off the idea.

Not particularly opposed to the idea, I just know that several use cases rely on
deterministic behavior for those entities that share the secret information, so
I need to be sure that the deterministic behavior remains and is the default.

I put those patches at the end so they can easily be dropped from the series.

Or, as I also mentioned, simply postponed until there's been more discussion.  
Since that's an actual semantic change, collecting a few other opinions
would be valuable.

I'll look at this series in detail shortly.
Neil

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