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Linus Torvalds b84d75064f random: try to actively add entropy rather than passively wait for it 
commit 50ee7529ec upstream.

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>
Cc: Noah Meyerhans <noahm@debian.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
2020-02-01 09:37:11 +00:00
arch arc: eznps: fix allmodconfig kconfig warning 2020-02-01 09:37:06 +00:00
block block: don't use bio->bi_vcnt to figure out segment number 2020-01-27 14:50:23 +01:00
certs export.h: remove VMLINUX_SYMBOL() and VMLINUX_SYMBOL_STR() 2018-08-22 23:21:44 +09:00
crypto crypto: af_alg - Use bh_lock_sock in sk_destruct 2020-02-01 09:37:11 +00:00
Documentation Documentation: Document arm64 kpti control 2020-01-29 16:43:19 +01:00
drivers random: try to actively add entropy rather than passively wait for it 2020-02-01 09:37:11 +00:00
firmware Fix built-in early-load Intel microcode alignment 2020-01-23 08:21:29 +01:00
fs cifs: Fix memory allocation in __smb2_handle_cancelled_cmd() 2020-02-01 09:37:04 +00:00
include ARM: OMAP2+: SmartReflex: add omap_sr_pdata definition 2020-02-01 09:37:10 +00:00
init fork: fix some -Wmissing-prototypes warnings 2019-12-05 09:21:04 +01:00
ipc ipc/mqueue.c: only perform resource calculation if user valid 2019-08-06 19:06:52 +02:00
kernel sched/fair: Fix insertion in rq->leaf_cfs_rq_list 2020-02-01 09:37:10 +00:00
lib Partially revert "kfifo: fix kfifo_alloc() and kfifo_init()" 2020-01-27 14:51:08 +01:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Remove CC-BY-SA-4.0 license text 2018-10-18 11:28:50 +02:00
mm mm/memory_hotplug: shrink zones when offlining memory 2020-01-29 16:43:27 +01:00
net net_sched: fix ops->bind_class() implementations 2020-02-01 09:37:06 +00:00
samples samples/bpf: Fix broken xdp_rxq_info due to map order assumptions 2020-01-27 14:51:22 +01:00
scripts ARM: 8950/1: ftrace/recordmcount: filter relocation types 2020-01-29 16:43:19 +01:00
security keys: Timestamp new keys 2020-01-27 14:50:23 +01:00
sound ASoC: sun4i-i2s: RX and TX counter registers are swapped 2020-01-27 14:51:05 +01:00
tools tools: bpftool: fix format strings and arguments for jsonw_printf() 2020-01-27 14:51:05 +01:00
usr kbuild: clean compressed initramfs image 2019-10-07 18:57:16 +02:00
virt KVM: arm/arm64: vgic: Don't rely on the wrong pending table 2019-12-13 08:52:45 +01:00
.clang-format clang-format: Set IndentWrappedFunctionNames false 2018-08-01 18:38:51 +02:00
.cocciconfig
.get_maintainer.ignore
.gitattributes
.gitignore Kbuild updates for v4.17 (2nd) 2018-04-15 17:21:30 -07:00
.mailmap libnvdimm-for-4.19_misc 2018-08-25 18:13:10 -07:00
COPYING COPYING: use the new text with points to the license files 2018-03-23 12:41:45 -06:00
CREDITS 9p: remove Ron Minnich from MAINTAINERS 2018-08-17 16:20:26 -07:00
Kbuild Kbuild updates for v4.15 2017-11-17 17:45:29 -08:00
Kconfig kconfig: move the "Executable file formats" menu to fs/Kconfig.binfmt 2018-08-02 08:06:55 +09:00
MAINTAINERS USB: rio500: Remove Rio 500 kernel driver 2019-10-17 13:44:47 -07:00
Makefile Linux 4.19.100 2020-01-29 16:43:27 +01:00
README Docs: Added a pointer to the formatted docs to README 2018-03-21 09:02:53 -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.
See Documentation/00-INDEX for a list of what is contained in each file.

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.