random(4) plugin infrastructure for mulitple RNG in a modular fashion

[Arthur Mesh]

On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 12:09:52PM +0200, Dag-Erling Sm??rgrav wrote:
> I still haven't received an answer to my question about options vs
> devices.  AFAICT there is no reason whatsoever to have padlock or yarrow
> as kernel options rather than devices.  The fact that they are available
> as modules is be a big hint that they should be devices, not options.
> The fact that we haven't been consistent in the past is not an excuse to
> continue making the same mistake in the present and future.

I agree that devices make more sense for yarrow/rdrand/nehemiah. We'll have a
patch ready for review by so@ soon.

> I also believe that randomness is sufficiently important that we should
> have yarrow (or fortuna, when it materializes) in DEFAULTS.  Users who
> don't want it (or prefer to load it as a module) can disable it with a
> nodevice entry in their kernel config.

If we go this path, then random itself should also go in to DEFAULTS. Agreed?
Does change to DEFAULTS need review by someone other than so@?

> BTW, I see that the sysctl was changed (per my request) to return an
> empty string if no adaptors are present:
> 
>         if (LIST_EMPTY(&adaptors))
>                 error = SYSCTL_OUT(req, "", strlen(""));
> 
>         LIST_FOREACH(rpp, &adaptors, entries) {
>                 if (0 != SYSCTL_OUT(req, rpp->name, strlen(rpp->name)))
>                         break;
>         }
> 
> but if I read the code correctly, if multiple adaptors are present,
> their names will be concatenated with no separator.  You probably want
> something like this:

Yes, it's a bug. David already has a patch (almost) ready for review by
so at .

Thanks