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authorTheodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>2013-09-21 13:58:22 -0400
committerMoyster <oysterized@gmail.com>2016-09-10 12:06:48 +0200
commitf9f7622978518d7a17e880e3519742d690b89ba5 (patch)
tree796584ff2648e682b9bcaf3e4bfbfe910e0aa48b /include/linux
parent9ccd037fa0c77d680e1306dfdd0d6bfddf8b05a2 (diff)
random: allow architectures to optionally define random_get_entropy()
Allow architectures which have a disabled get_cycles() function to provide a random_get_entropy() function which provides a fine-grained, rapidly changing counter that can be used by the /dev/random driver. For example, an architecture might have a rapidly changing register used to control random TLB cache eviction, or DRAM refresh that doesn't meet the requirements of get_cycles(), but which is good enough for the needs of the random driver. Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu> Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Diffstat (limited to 'include/linux')
-rw-r--r--include/linux/timex.h14
1 files changed, 14 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/include/linux/timex.h b/include/linux/timex.h
index dd3edd7df..9d3f1a5b6 100644
--- a/include/linux/timex.h
+++ b/include/linux/timex.h
@@ -64,6 +64,20 @@
#include <asm/timex.h>
+#ifndef random_get_entropy
+/*
+ * The random_get_entropy() function is used by the /dev/random driver
+ * in order to extract entropy via the relative unpredictability of
+ * when an interrupt takes places versus a high speed, fine-grained
+ * timing source or cycle counter. Since it will be occurred on every
+ * single interrupt, it must have a very low cost/overhead.
+ *
+ * By default we use get_cycles() for this purpose, but individual
+ * architectures may override this in their asm/timex.h header file.
+ */
+#define random_get_entropy() get_cycles()
+#endif
+
/*
* SHIFT_PLL is used as a dampening factor to define how much we
* adjust the frequency correction for a given offset in PLL mode.