Re: /dev/random never refills, 1.99.7

Paul Gortmaker (gpg109@rsphy6.anu.edu.au)
Mon, 27 May 1996 12:57:30 +1000 (EST)


- From lilo (TaRDiS@mail.utexas.edu) Fri, 24 May 1996 06:20:18 -0500 (CDT)

> See topic. I was silly enough to do a cat of /dev/random, now, 10 hours
> later, still nothing there.
>
> Got lots of interrupts overnight, run my computer constantly.
>
> ?? :)

No drivers use add_irq_randomness() at present, as I said earlier (below)

Also note that the floppy and IDE driver *look like* they use the
add_irq_randomness() because they use a SA_SAMPLE_RANDOM flag with
the call to request_irq(). But they also use SA_INTERRUPT, which means
using do_fast_IRQ() which correctly avoids calling add_irq_randomness(),
as it is only called inside do_IRQ(). In other words, using
SA_INTERRUPT|SA_SAMPLE_RANDOM is functionally equivalent to SA_INTERRUPT.
So to this point in time, it appears that *nobody* has used
add_irq_randomness() yet.

So you will have to put your keyboard in the bottom of your pet hampster's
cage overnight, or run updatedb at 2:30am to create some disk activity.

Paul.