Re: [patch 0/5] HW RNG cleanup & new drivers

[Linus Torvalds]

On Sun, 30 Oct 2005, Deepak Saxena wrote:
> 
> I think moving it to user space will add more complexity for
> the case where the HW unit is shared with an in in-kernel driver.

Moving it to user space is just generally stupid.

Often, the random stuff comes from chipsets, not the CPU itself. Not 
user-accessible at all, and even if it were, it would be a bad idea to 
have user space do things the kernel does normally ("what northbridge do I 
have").

There may be use for a user-level library that handles the native CPU 
instructions for high performance, but that in no way negates the reason 
why /dev/random and friends exist in the first place.

		Linus
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