From: Torvald Riegel <triegel@redhat.com>
To: Florian Weimer <fweimer@redhat.com>
Cc: Szabolcs Nagy <szabolcs.nagy@arm.com>,
Adhemerval Zanella <adhemerval.zanella@linaro.org>,
nd@arm.com, libc-alpha@sourceware.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v7] getrandom system call wrapper [BZ #17252]
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2016 15:23:00 -0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <1480433030.14990.34.camel@redhat.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <27d946d1-ef23-df50-8061-cbada2dea2e9@redhat.com>
On Tue, 2016-11-29 at 15:40 +0100, Florian Weimer wrote:
> On 11/29/2016 02:56 PM, Torvald Riegel wrote:
> > On Tue, 2016-11-29 at 09:16 +0100, Florian Weimer wrote:
> >> On 11/18/2016 05:04 PM, Torvald Riegel wrote:
> >>> On Fri, 2016-11-18 at 16:13 +0100, Florian Weimer wrote:
> >>>> On 11/18/2016 03:21 PM, Torvald Riegel wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> As discussed in the thread, there are different opinions about what the
> >>>>> default should be. There are reasonable arguments for both options. In
> >>>>> such a case, it seems better to make the choice explicit, simply from an
> >>>>> ease-of-use and interface design perspective.
> >>>>
> >>>> Unfortunately, this is not the approach that POSIX has chosen. But
> >>>> there is precedent for doing our own thing in this area: the "c" flag
> >>>> for fopen. We cannot use the existing flags argument in getrandom for
> >>>> this purpose because its layout is controlled by the kernel.
> >>>
> >>> It seems a separate argument would be better than using up space in the
> >>> existing flags. Cancellation is something we add, so we should add to
> >>> the underlying interface too, instead of messing with it.
> >>
> >> Is this separate argument your personal preference, or are you just
> >> trying to find common ground and reconcile different positions?
> >
> > It's my personal preference. Which is partially motivated by trying to
> > find common ground between the different use cases (and not finding
> > obvious common group, so therefore make the choice explicit).
>
> Hmph.
Note that I mean that this is my preference specifically in the scenario
of adding some sort of flag to getrandom() and offering only
getrandom().
> I was about to propose a new patch, with two functions:
>
> getrandom, as I posted it the last time (an unadorned system call which
> is also a cancellation point).
>
> getentropy, a thin wrapper which avoids returning EINTR (to match
> OpenBSD and Solaris) and is not a cancellation point. It would return
> EIO on short reads, too.
>
> The documentation would have said that getrandom is a lower-level
> function for those which need GRND_RANDOM or cancellation, and everyone
> else should call getrandom.
I guess one of these should be getentropy (the latter?).
> Would this work for you?
Yeah, I guess so. I can't really estimate how obvious it would be for
users to have to consider the pair of these (and thus make a conscious
choice and understand what cancellation means) -- but if we can make
this fairly obvious (eg, through proper documentation) and thus are
likely to prevent users from making a mistake, and we have an
alternative for the non-cancellation use case, then I guess this could
be a meaningful solution.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2016-11-29 15:23 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 62+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2016-06-10 21:03 [PATCH] Add getrandom implementation " Florian Weimer
2016-06-10 21:31 ` Joseph Myers
2016-06-10 21:36 ` Joseph Myers
2016-06-10 22:00 ` Paul Eggert
2016-06-10 22:06 ` Joseph Myers
2016-06-11 11:13 ` Florian Weimer
2016-06-11 20:10 ` Paul Eggert
2016-06-10 22:15 ` Roland McGrath
2016-06-10 22:40 ` Joseph Myers
2016-06-10 22:45 ` Roland McGrath
2016-06-23 17:21 ` Florian Weimer
2016-06-25 21:58 ` Paul Eggert
2016-09-02 22:23 ` Roland McGrath
2016-06-27 15:07 ` [PATCH v2] " Florian Weimer
2016-06-30 9:33 ` Rical Jasan
2016-09-08 9:53 ` Florian Weimer
2016-09-08 10:13 ` Andreas Schwab
2016-09-08 10:28 ` Florian Weimer
2016-09-08 11:58 ` Rical Jasan
2016-09-08 12:36 ` Florian Weimer
2016-06-30 12:03 ` Zack Weinberg
2016-07-13 13:10 ` Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos
2016-11-14 17:45 ` [PATCH v7] getrandom system call wrapper " Florian Weimer
2016-11-14 18:29 ` Zack Weinberg
2016-11-15 20:57 ` Richard Henderson
2016-11-16 15:11 ` Florian Weimer
2016-11-16 15:20 ` Zack Weinberg
2016-11-16 15:52 ` Florian Weimer
2016-11-16 16:41 ` Zack Weinberg
2016-11-17 13:02 ` Florian Weimer
2016-11-17 13:46 ` Zack Weinberg
2016-11-17 13:50 ` Florian Weimer
2016-11-17 13:56 ` Zack Weinberg
2016-11-17 15:24 ` Florian Weimer
2016-11-17 17:16 ` Zack Weinberg
2016-11-18 10:27 ` Szabolcs Nagy
2016-11-18 15:46 ` Torvald Riegel
2016-11-18 18:50 ` Zack Weinberg
2016-11-21 16:57 ` Torvald Riegel
2016-11-21 17:12 ` Zack Weinberg
2016-11-21 17:30 ` Torvald Riegel
2016-11-21 17:34 ` Florian Weimer
2016-11-29 8:24 ` Florian Weimer
2016-11-16 18:02 ` Torvald Riegel
2016-11-16 19:53 ` Adhemerval Zanella
2016-11-17 12:52 ` Torvald Riegel
2016-11-18 8:28 ` Szabolcs Nagy
2016-11-18 14:21 ` Torvald Riegel
2016-11-18 15:13 ` Florian Weimer
2016-11-18 16:04 ` Torvald Riegel
2016-11-29 8:16 ` Florian Weimer
2016-11-29 13:56 ` Torvald Riegel
2016-11-29 14:40 ` Florian Weimer
2016-11-29 15:23 ` Torvald Riegel [this message]
2016-11-29 15:32 ` Florian Weimer
2016-11-29 15:54 ` Zack Weinberg
2016-11-29 17:53 ` Paul Eggert
2016-11-29 18:11 ` Florian Weimer
2016-11-29 19:37 ` Paul Eggert
2016-11-30 6:09 ` Florian Weimer
2016-11-17 6:21 ` Mike Frysinger
2016-11-18 13:21 ` Florian Weimer
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