[CentOS-virt] Would a hardware TRNG benefit VMs?

Tue Jul 16 22:01:20 UTC 2013
Pete Travis <lists at petetravis.com>

On Jul 16, 2013 10:20 AM, "Digimer" <lists at alteeve.ca> wrote:
>
> On 16/07/13 06:30, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
> > On Mon, 15 Jul 2013, Digimer wrote:
> >> On 15/07/13 07:04, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
> >>> On Sat, 13 Jul 2013, Digimer wrote:
> >>>> Hi all,
> >>>>
> >>>>      I've been curious about using hardware true random number
generators
> >>>> in my VM clusters. This got me wondering about the VM's /dev/random
> >>>> source... If I setup a hardware TRNG on the host, would the VM's also
> >>>> benefit from it?
> >>>
> >>> Xen VMs would not be able to benefit from it. I don't know about KVM.
> >>
> >> Would you be able to elaborate on why not? I know Xen and KVM differ,
but this
> >> is not a topic I have seen discussed at all before, so any insight
would be
> >> helpful and appreciated! :)
> >
> > Because we don't have a paravirtualized interface to export the
> > randomness to the guest.
> > It would be a nice small little project to do that though.
> >
>
> Ah, ok. I'm an admin, not a programmer, so I am not sure what would be
> needed. Given how popular VMs are now, I can imagine it would be a nice
> feature to have. If it's a "small" project, then all the better! :)
>
> Thanks!
>
> --
> Digimer
> Papers and Projects: https://alteeve.ca/w/
> What if the cure for cancer is trapped in the mind of a person without
> access to education?
>

There is such a thing, see
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Virtio_RNG

--Pete
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