locks and kernel randomness...

[Warner Losh]

> On Feb 24, 2015, at 10:40 AM, John-Mark Gurney <jmg at funkthat.com> wrote:
> 
> Warner Losh wrote this message on Tue, Feb 24, 2015 at 07:56 -0700:
>> Then again, if you want to change random(), provide a weak_random() that???s
>> the traditional non-crypto thing that???s fast and lockless. That would make it easy
>> to audit in our tree. The scheduler doesn???t need cryptographic randomness, it
>> just needs to make different choices sometimes to ensure its notion of fairness.
> 
> I do not support having a weak_random...  If the consumer is sure
> enough that you don't need a secure random, then they can pick an LCG
> and implement it themselves and deal (or not) w/ the locking issues...
> 
> It appears that the scheduler had an LCG but for some reason the authors
> didn't feel like using it here..

Why don’t you support having a common random routine that’s to mix the
pot, but not cryptographically secure? Lots of algorithms use them, and having
a common one would keep us from reinventing the wheel.

Warner