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

[Linus Torvalds]

On Sat, 17 Aug 2002, Oliver Xymoron wrote:
> 
> But it will get data of _equal quality_ to the current approach from
> /dev/urandom.

So what?

If you make /dev/random useless ("but you can use /dev/urandom instead") 
then we should not have it.

> > Are you seriously trying to say that a TSC running at a gigahertz cannot 
> > be considered to contain any random information just because you think you 
> > can time the network activity so well from the outside?
> 
> Yes. The clock of interest is the PCI bus clock, which is not terribly
> fast next to a gigabit network analyzer.

Be realistic. This is what I ask of you. We want _real_world_ security, 
not a completely made-up-example-for-the-NSA-that-is-useless-to-anybody- 
else.

All your arguments seem to boil down to "people shouldn't use /dev/random 
at all, they should use /dev/urandom".

Which is just ridiculous.

		Linus