Re: random: /dev/random often returns short reads

[Denys Vlasenko]

On 01/17/2017 06:15 PM, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 17, 2017 at 09:21:31AM +0100, Denys Vlasenko wrote:
> > > If someone wants to send me a patch, I'll happily take a look at it,
> >
> > Will something along these lines be accepted?
>
> The problem is that this won't work.  In the cases that we're talking
> about, the entropy counter in the secondary pool is not zero, but
> close to zero, we'll still have short reads.  And that's going to
> happen a fair amount of the time.
>
> Perhaps the best *hacky* solution would be to say, ok if the entropy
> count is less than some threshold, don't use the correct entropy
> calculation, but rather assume that all of the new bits won't land on
> top of existing entropy bits.

IOW, something like this:

--- a/drivers/char/random.c
+++ b/drivers/char/random.c
@@ -653,6 +653,9 @@ static void credit_entropy_bits(struct
entropy_store *r, int nbits)
        if (nfrac < 0) {
                /* Debit */
                entropy_count += nfrac;
+       } else if (entropy_count < ((8 * 8) << ENTROPY_SHIFT)) {
+               /* Credit, and the pool is almost empty */
+               entropy_count += nfrac;
        } else {
                /*
                 * Credit: we have to account for the possibility of
                 * overwriting already present entropy.  Even in the

Want the patch? If yes, what name of the constant you prefer? How about

/* Has less than 8 bytes */
#define ALMOST_EMPTY_POOL_frac   ((8 * 8) << ENTROPY_SHIFT)