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random: initialize the last_time field in struct timer_rand_state

Since we initialize jiffies to wrap five minutes before boot (see
INITIAL_JIFFIES defined in include/linux/jiffies.h) it's important to
make sure the last_time field is initialized to INITIAL_JIFFIES.
Otherwise, the entropy estimator will overestimate the amount of
entropy resulting from the first call to add_timer_randomness(),
generally by about 8 bits.

Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
Theodore Ts'o 11 years ago
parent
commit
644008df89
1 changed files with 6 additions and 2 deletions
  1. 6 2
      drivers/char/random.c

+ 6 - 2
drivers/char/random.c

@@ -724,6 +724,8 @@ struct timer_rand_state {
 	unsigned dont_count_entropy:1;
 };
 
+#define INIT_TIMER_RAND_STATE { INITIAL_JIFFIES, };
+
 /*
  * Add device- or boot-specific data to the input and nonblocking
  * pools to help initialize them to unique values.
@@ -750,7 +752,7 @@ void add_device_randomness(const void *buf, unsigned int size)
 }
 EXPORT_SYMBOL(add_device_randomness);
 
-static struct timer_rand_state input_timer_state;
+static struct timer_rand_state input_timer_state = INIT_TIMER_RAND_STATE;
 
 /*
  * This function adds entropy to the entropy "pool" by using timing
@@ -1267,8 +1269,10 @@ void rand_initialize_disk(struct gendisk *disk)
 	 * source.
 	 */
 	state = kzalloc(sizeof(struct timer_rand_state), GFP_KERNEL);
-	if (state)
+	if (state) {
+		state->last_time = INITIAL_JIFFIES;
 		disk->random = state;
+	}
 }
 #endif