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Linus Torvalds 50ee7529ec random: try to actively add entropy rather than passively wait for it 
For 5.3 we had to revert a nice ext4 IO pattern improvement, because it
caused a bootup regression due to lack of entropy at bootup together
with arguably broken user space that was asking for secure random
numbers when it really didn't need to.

See commit 72dbcf7215 (Revert "ext4: make __ext4_get_inode_loc plug").

This aims to solve the issue by actively generating entropy noise using
the CPU cycle counter when waiting for the random number generator to
initialize.  This only works when you have a high-frequency time stamp
counter available, but that's the case on all modern x86 CPU's, and on
most other modern CPU's too.

What we do is to generate jitter entropy from the CPU cycle counter
under a somewhat complex load: calling the scheduler while also
guaranteeing a certain amount of timing noise by also triggering a
timer.

I'm sure we can tweak this, and that people will want to look at other
alternatives, but there's been a number of papers written on jitter
entropy, and this should really be fairly conservative by crediting one
bit of entropy for every timer-induced jump in the cycle counter.  Not
because the timer itself would be all that unpredictable, but because
the interaction between the timer and the loop is going to be.

Even if (and perhaps particularly if) the timer actually happens on
another CPU, the cacheline interaction between the loop that reads the
cycle counter and the timer itself firing is going to add perturbations
to the cycle counter values that get mixed into the entropy pool.

As Thomas pointed out, with a modern out-of-order CPU, even quite simple
loops show a fair amount of hard-to-predict timing variability even in
the absense of external interrupts.  But this tries to take that further
by actually having a fairly complex interaction.

This is not going to solve the entropy issue for architectures that have
no CPU cycle counter, but it's not clear how (and if) that is solvable,
and the hardware in question is largely starting to be irrelevant.  And
by doing this we can at least avoid some of the even more contentious
approaches (like making the entropy waiting time out in order to avoid
the possibly unbounded waiting).

Cc: Ahmed Darwish <darwish.07@gmail.com>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>
Cc: Nicholas Mc Guire <hofrat@opentech.at>
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>
Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Cc: Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu>
Cc: Alexander E. Patrakov <patrakov@gmail.com>
Cc: Lennart Poettering <mzxreary@0pointer.de>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2019-09-29 17:38:52 -07:00
arch The main change here is a revert of reverts. We recently simplified some 2019-09-14 16:07:40 -07:00
block block: remove REQ_NOWAIT_INLINE 2019-08-15 11:09:16 -06:00
certs Revert "Merge tag 'keys-acl-20190703' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/dhowells/linux-fs" 2019-07-10 18:43:43 -07:00
crypto USB / PHY patches for 5.3-rc1 2019-07-11 15:40:06 -07:00
Documentation riscv: modify the Image header to improve compatibility with the ARM64 header 2019-09-13 19:03:52 -07:00
drivers random: try to actively add entropy rather than passively wait for it 2019-09-29 17:38:52 -07:00
fs Revert "ext4: make __ext4_get_inode_loc plug" 2019-09-15 12:32:03 -07:00
include Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net 2019-09-14 12:20:38 -07:00
init Merge branch 'work.mount0' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/vfs 2019-07-19 10:42:02 -07:00
ipc ipc: fix sparc64 ipc() wrapper 2019-09-07 21:42:25 +02:00
kernel Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net 2019-09-14 12:20:38 -07:00
lib lib/Kconfig: fix OBJAGG in lib/ menu structure 2019-09-11 09:30:10 +01:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Rename other to deprecated 2019-05-03 06:34:32 -06:00
mm mm/balloon_compaction: suppress allocation warnings 2019-09-04 07:42:01 -04:00
net sctp: destroy bucket if failed to bind addr 2019-09-13 22:06:20 +02:00
samples auxdisplay: Fix a typo in cfag12864b-example.c 2019-08-08 20:00:18 +02:00
scripts SPDX fixes for 5.3-rc5 2019-08-18 09:26:16 -07:00
security keys: Fix missing null pointer check in request_key_auth_describe() 2019-09-05 14:19:25 -07:00
sound sound fixes for 5.3-rc8 2019-09-05 10:26:20 -07:00
tools Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net 2019-09-14 12:20:38 -07:00
usr kbuild: enable arch/s390/include/uapi/asm/zcrypt.h for uapi header test 2019-07-23 10:45:46 +02:00
virt arm64 fixes for -rc7 2019-08-28 10:37:21 -07:00
.clang-format clang-format: Update with the latest for_each macro list 2019-08-31 10:00:51 +02:00
.cocciconfig
.get_maintainer.ignore Opt out of scripts/get_maintainer.pl 2019-05-16 10:53:40 -07:00
.gitattributes
.gitignore .gitignore: Add compilation database file 2019-07-27 12:18:19 +09:00
.mailmap mailmap: add aliases for Dmitry Safonov 2019-08-30 18:00:50 -07:00
COPYING COPYING: use the new text with points to the license files 2018-03-23 12:41:45 -06:00
CREDITS Remove references to dead website. 2019-07-19 12:22:04 -07:00
Kbuild Kbuild updates for v5.1 2019-03-10 17:48:21 -07:00
Kconfig docs: kbuild: convert docs to ReST and rename to *.rst 2019-06-14 14:21:21 -06:00
MAINTAINERS MAINTAINERS: add myself as maintainer for xilinx axiethernet driver 2019-09-06 15:17:16 +02:00
Makefile Linux 5.3 2019-09-15 14:19:32 -07:00
README Drop all 00-INDEX files from Documentation/ 2018-09-09 15:08:58 -06:00

README 

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.