Re: [PATCH] (0/4) Entropy accounting fixes

[Linus Torvalds]

On Sat, 17 Aug 2002, Oliver Xymoron wrote:
> 
> Let me clarify that 2-5 orders thing. The kernel trusts about 10 times
> as many samples as it should, and overestimates each samples' entropy
> by about a factor of 10 (on x86 with TSC) or 1.3 (using 1kHz jiffies).

Lookin gat the code, your _new_ code just throws samples away _entirely_ 
just because some random event hasn't happened (the first thing I noticed 
was the context switch testing, there may be others there that I just 
didn't react to).

In short, you seem to cut those random events to _zero_. And this happens 
under what seems to be perfectly realistic loads. That's not trying to fix 
things, that's just breaking them.

> The patches will be a nuisance for anyone who's currently using
> /dev/random to generate session keys on busy SSL servers.

No, it appears to be a nuisanse even for people who have real issues, ie 
just generating _occasional_ numbers on machines that just don't happen to 
run much user space programs.

		Linus