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Commit 95b709b6 authored by Theodore Ts'o's avatar Theodore Ts'o
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random: drop trickle mode



The add_timer_randomness() used to drop into trickle mode when entropy
pool was estimated to be 87.5% full.  This was important when
add_timer_randomness() was used to sample interrupts.  It's not used
for this any more --- add_interrupt_randomness() now uses fast_mix()
instead.  By elimitating trickle mode, it allows us to fully utilize
entropy provided by add_input_randomness() and add_disk_randomness()
even when the input pool is above the old trickle threshold of 87.5%.

This helps to answer the criticism in [1] in their hypothetical
scenario where our entropy estimator was inaccurate, even though the
measurements in [2] seem to indicate that our entropy estimator given
real-life entropy collection is actually pretty good, albeit on the
conservative side (which was as it was designed).

[1] http://eprint.iacr.org/2013/338.pdf
[2] http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/251.pdf

Signed-off-by: default avatar"Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
parent 6e9fa2c8
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