[PATCH] getrandom: new applet

[Michael Conrad]

On 7/7/2016 11:49 AM, Rob Landley wrote:
> On 07/06/2016 11:41 AM, Etienne Champetier wrote:
>> >Now you really hate the fact that getrandom() is a syscall.
> I do not hate the fact getrandom is a syscall. I'm asking what the point
> is of a new applet to call this syscall. You have suggested it could
> block to show when /dev/urandom is producing a higher grade of
> randomness than it does before being properly seeded. That is, as far as
> I can tell, the only reason for your new applet to exist rather than
> upgrading $RANDOM in ash/hush.
>
Actually in my opinion the syscall is inferior to a new character 
device, because blocking syscalls interfere with event-driven programming.

Suppose you want to write a single-thread event-driven web server which 
initializes its SSL library with this randomness source (i.e. won't 
allow SSL until enough entropy is collected for a good initialization) 
but you still want it to be able to accept non-SSL connections.  In 
order to use the syscall you need a thread, or child process.  (haha, 
such as pipe to a "getrandom" applet...)

-Mike


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