Adding standalone RSA code

[Devon H. O'Dell]

Mark Murray wrote:
> Colin Percival writes:
> 
>>Mark Murray wrote:
>>
>>>Colin Percival writes:
>>>
>>>>I was comparing /usr/lib/libcrypto.a (1.7 MB on my system) to the sum
>>>>of the sizes of the object files built from my library code (38 kB).
>>>>
>>>>If you look at the number of lines of C files (counted using `wc -l`
>>>>since I don't want to bother installing sloccount), my code is 1489
>>>>lines compared to openssl's 202982 lines.
>>>
>>>Do you have a version of your code linked against OpenSSL? What is the 
>>>size difference between a static link of your code vs a static link 
>>>against OpenSSL?
>>
>>I don't have a version using openssl, but my key generation program
>>(statically linked against my crypto code) is 37kB, while a program
>>which calls RSA_generate_key (statically linked against openssl) is
>>240kB.  So even under the most favourable conditions (adding overhead
>>to my code but not to openssl) it's a size ratio of more than 6.
> 
> 
> Hmm.
> 
> I must profess to having a degree of discomfort with duplicated
> functionality.
> 
> 240k is not a big binary, and it sounds like your applet is one that
> may get heavy use. Its not built for speed; how much of a problem is
> this? If OpenSSL grows hardware BigNum support, your app will not
> benefit; how will this affect the user? Is size really a concern?
> I can't find a disk smaller than 10 GB at my local dealer.

I use CompactFlash cards to run FreeBSD on some systems, and the 
smallest is 16MB. This would be a very welcomed library for such a 
system. A good few people are using solid-state disks for data storage 
in FreeBSD these days, especially those of us doing work on embedded 
systems.

When you have several binaries linking against OpenSSL, that 240k can 
take up a lot of space, very quickly.

> M
> --
> Mark Murray
> iumop ap!sdn w,I idlaH

Hope I didn't sound callous; that's not my intention.

Kind regards,

Devon H. O'Dell