xref: /freebsd/share/man/man9/random_harvest.9 (revision eacee0ff7ec955b32e09515246bd97b6edcd2b0f)
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26.\" $FreeBSD$
27.\"
28.Dd February 6, 2002
29.Dt RANDOM_HARVEST 9
30.Os FreeBSD
31.Sh NAME
32.Nm random_harvest
33.Nd gather entropy from the kernel for the entropy device
34.Sh SYNOPSIS
35.Fd #include <sys/random.h>
36.Ft void
37.Fn random_harvest "void *entropy" "u_int size" "u_int bits" "u_int frac" "enum esource source"
38.Sh DESCRIPTION
39The
40.Nm
41function is used by device drivers
42and other kernel processes to pass data
43that is considered (at least partially) stochastic
44to the entropy device.
45.Pp
46The caller should pass a pointer (to no more than 16 bytes) of
47the ``random'' data in
48.Ar entropy.
49The argument
50.Ar size
51contains the number of bytes pointed to.
52The caller should
53.Em very conservatively
54estimate the number of random bits
55in the sample,
56and pass this in
57.Ar bits
58or
59.Ar frac .
60If the estimated number of bits per sample is an integer, then
61.Ar bits
62is used, and
63.Ar frac is 0.
64Otherwise,
65for low-entropy samples,
66``fractional'' entropy can be supplied in
67.Ar frac
68(This is considered to be
69.Ar frac /
701024 bits of entropy).
71The
72.Ar source
73is chosen from
74.Dv RANDOM_WRITE ,
75.Dv RANDOM_KEYBOARD ,
76.Dv RANDOM_MOUSE ,
77.Dv RANDOM_NET
78and
79.Dv RANDOM_INTERRUPT
80and is used to indicate the source of the entropy.
81.Pp
82Interrupt harvesting has been simplified
83for the kernel programmer.
84If a device driver registers an interrupt handler
85with
86.Fn BUS_SETUP_INTR
87or
88.Fn bus_setup_intr ,
89then it is only necessary to
90include the INTR_ENTROPY bit in the
91.Ar flags
92argument to have that interrupt source
93be used for entropy harvesting.
94.Sh SEE ALSO
95.Xr random 4 ,
96.Xr BUS_SETUP_INTR 9
97.Sh AUTHOR
98The
99.Fx
100.Pa /dev/random
101entropy device and supporting documentation was written by
102.An Mark R V Murray .
103