On Fri, 28 Mar 2014 17:09:43 EDT erik quanstrom <quans...@quanstro.net> wrote: > On Fri Mar 28 13:21:35 EDT 2014, ba...@bitblocks.com wrote: > > I have put an initial version of raspberryPi hardware RNG > > driver on sources. Supposedly bcm2835 uses a reverse bias > > transistor as a noise source (though I couldn't find anything > > a definitive source for this). FWIW, I ran the output through > > rngtest (does FIPS 140-2 tests) and the failure rate is about > > the same as FreeBSD's (about 1 out of 1000). rngtest tests at > > a minimum 2*10^6 bits and plan9's stock /dev/random seems far > > too slow so I didn't bother testing it. > > > > Just copy /n/sources/contrib/bakul/random.c to sys/src/9/bcm > > and rebuild 9pi. > > > > Arguably this should be a new device, /dev/hrng or something, > > but plan9's /dev/random code is very simple compared to the > > elaborate versions on *BSD's. I have kept this one simple too. > > If you are concerned about the quality of RNG or paranoid > > about bcm2835's unpublic algorithm, feel free to complexify! > > i have not had luck with this. i get data aborts when booting > from flash, and hangs when rebooting via /dev/reboot.
Sorry about that! I forgot to mention that this facility was added around Jan 30, 2013. See Dom's message on page 12 on http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=19334&p=273944#p273944 Make sure you have firmware as least as recent as that. Not sure if Richard's 9pi image on sources has something more recent. I will check this evening.
