Re: random: Providing a seed value to VM guests

From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Thu May 01 2014 - 19:00:55 EST


On 05/01/2014 03:56 PM, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
>
> I think we're comparing:
>
> a) cpuid to detect rdrand *or* emulated rdrand followed by rdrand
>
> to
>
> b) cpuid to detect rdrand or the paravirt seed msr/cpuid call,
> followed by rdrand or the msr or cpuid read
>
> this seems like it barely makes a difference, especially since (a)
> probably requires detecting KVM anyway.

Well, it lets one do something like:

if (boot_cpu_has(X86_FEATURE_RDRAND) ||
boot_cpu_has(X86_FEATURE_RDRAND_SIMULATED))
rdrand_long(...);

We need the ifs anyway for early code; the arch_*() interfaces are only
available after alternatives run.

-hpa

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/