On 06/21/2018 02:00 PM, Gerald B. Cox wrote: > On Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 10:27 AM, Lennart Poettering <mzerq...@0pointer.de> > wrote: > >> Just out of curiosity: when precisely is rngd supposed to be used? As >> soon as there's a hardware RNG device /dev/hwrng? That should be >> easy enough: ConditionFileExists=/dev/hwrng... Or are there other >> cases when this is supposed to be start? >> >> (Also, why is there a userspace component for this stuff in the first >> place? I mean streaming data from one corner of the kernel to another >> corner of the kernel is something probably better done inside of the >> kernel instead of involving userspace at all with this...) >> >> Here are a couple of links I found: > https://www.certdepot.net/rhel7-get-started-random-number-generator/ > https://volumeintegration.com/best-entropy-generation-software-for-linux/ > > My understanding from the above is that "Rngd-tools and the rngd command is > not a tool to generate entropy. > It is a program that takes randomness from a true random hardware device > and puts it into /dev/random." > > So, if you don't have the hardware device, it isn't to be used. There are > usb type devices such as > OneRNG, TrueRNG, Chaoskey, NeuG that you can purchase that can provide this > functionality.
That is interesting. Out of curiosity, does rngd have any support for a smart card as a source of random numbers? If so, I believe that would be an example of why the userspace daemon might be useful; smart card communication kinda has to be userspace. _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/O5YVUTSRHYOKFGWCLQENNSVRVYMT5RKR/
