Re: [RFC PATCH] drivers/char/random.c: Is reducing locking range like this safe?

From: George Spelvin
Date: Mon Jun 09 2014 - 05:23:25 EST


> Sigh, adventures in "unable to mount root filesystem" currently underway.

PEBKAC resolved. (I had CONFIG_ATA=m for some testing, but forgot
to change it back to y when compiling a kernel I expected to boot.)

32 MiB write:

Without patch With patch
0 readers: 0.495523 0.494998 0.515995 0.516026
1 reader: 0.842245 0.845308 0.704283 0.704318
2 readers: 1.18658 1.18762 0.904635 0.904844
3 readers: 1.49615 1.49616 1.14311 1.16836

I haven't rebooted back to the without-patch kernel to see if the 20 ms
loss is consistent, but obviously that needs fixing. (There's more than
just that patch I posted in there.)

Anyway, it's noticeable, but maybe not worth fixing.

The interesting question is whether we should get rid of out[].
That's obscurity that contributes no security, and thus a Bad
Thing by definition.
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