diff mbox series

[RFC,v1,07/10] arm64: use sched_clock() for random_get_entropy() instead of zero

Message ID 20220408182145.142506-8-Jason@zx2c4.com
State New
Headers show
Series archs/random: fallback to using sched_clock() if no cycle counter | expand

Commit Message

Jason A. Donenfeld April 8, 2022, 6:21 p.m. UTC
In the event that random_get_entropy() can't access a cycle counter or
similar, falling back to returning 0 is really not the best we can do.
Instead, at least calling sched_clock() would be preferable, because
that always needs to return _something_, even falling back to jiffies
eventually. It's not as though sched_clock() is super high precision or
guaranteed to be entropic, but basically anything that's not zero all
the time is better than returning zero all the time.

If CONFIG_ARM_ARCH_TIMER=n, then get_cycles() will return 0, so we only
need the fallback code for that case.

Cc: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
Cc: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
Cc: Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Jason A. Donenfeld <Jason@zx2c4.com>
---
 arch/arm64/include/asm/timex.h | 9 +++++++++
 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+)

Comments

Jason A. Donenfeld April 8, 2022, 6:40 p.m. UTC | #1
Hi Mark,

On Fri, Apr 08, 2022 at 07:33:53PM +0100, Mark Rutland wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 08, 2022 at 08:21:42PM +0200, Jason A. Donenfeld wrote:
> > In the event that random_get_entropy() can't access a cycle counter or
> > similar, falling back to returning 0 is really not the best we can do.
> > Instead, at least calling sched_clock() would be preferable, because
> > that always needs to return _something_, even falling back to jiffies
> > eventually. It's not as though sched_clock() is super high precision or
> > guaranteed to be entropic, but basically anything that's not zero all
> > the time is better than returning zero all the time.
> > 
> > If CONFIG_ARM_ARCH_TIMER=n, then get_cycles() will return 0, so we only
> > need the fallback code for that case.
> 
> In arch/arm64/Kconfig we unconditionally select CONFIG_ARM_ARCH_TIMER,
> so that configuration shouldn't be possible, and I don't think this
> patch is necessary.
> 
> On arm64 we depend on the architected timer in a bunch of places, so
> anyone hacking that out has bigger problems.

Thanks for the tip. I'll drop this patch from the series.

Jason
diff mbox series

Patch

diff --git a/arch/arm64/include/asm/timex.h b/arch/arm64/include/asm/timex.h
index cf59ce91b22d..bfebd2e1ce45 100644
--- a/arch/arm64/include/asm/timex.h
+++ b/arch/arm64/include/asm/timex.h
@@ -13,6 +13,15 @@ 
  */
 #define get_cycles()	arch_timer_read_counter()
 
+#ifndef CONFIG_ARM_ARCH_TIMER
+/*
+ * The default implementation of random_get_entropy() calls get_cycles(),
+ * which will return 0 if CONFIG_ARM_ARCH_TIMER=n, so we fall back to
+ * sched_clock() here. Not a great situation, but better than nothing.
+ */
+#define random_get_entropy() ((unsigned long)sched_clock())
+#endif
+
 #include <asm-generic/timex.h>
 
 #endif