[Gllug] Questions arising from the random discussions...

[Rich Walker]

On 2010-08-03 08:25, Nix wrote:
> On 3 Aug 2010, Walter Stanish verbalised:
> 
>>>>>> It may be of interest to read Documentation/hw_random.txt in /usr/src/linux
>>>>>
>>>>> That's about Linux's support for *hardware* random number generators (that
>>>>> is to say, those that need direct kernel support).
>>>>
>>>> Yes, they're in most modern PCs
>>>
>>> No they aren't. Some VIAs have them. Intel put them in some machines
>>> briefly and then stopped. I think that's it.
>>
>> Ahh, my bad.  I guess I just assumed that, after seeing them pop up some
>> years ago that PRNGs were - as per most hardware - to be accrued as
>> mainstream and thus become rolled in to the motherboards or CPUs and
>> never go away...
>>
>> Makes you wonder why they weren't?
> 
> Because most people have the same reaction as Jose Luis Martinez
> earlier, that this is ultra niche, even though it isn't, so it was
> dropped as a waste of silicon. (It's also really hard to keep random
> noise sources on the CPU die good-quality: there's just too much regular
> electrical noise around.)

AMD768 hwrng, rnd-tools installed (not installed by default in Debian -
weird) - still I can get "cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail"
from >2000 to <200 after 15 steps.

Hmm.

*goes to order*

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