Newer CPUs (Broadwell?) have new RDRAND and RDSEED instructions. Maybe it would be a good idea to allow their use inside guest VM ?
On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 5:48 PM, Johannes Ernst <[email protected]> wrote: > Unfortunately this is a headless server that wants to spin up and down a > large number of VMs in short sequence as part of a QA process. Each wants > to generate some key pairs. So banging on the keyboard or such isn't an > option. > > Sent from my iPad. > > > On Mar 4, 2015, at 01:58, Frank Mehnert <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > I think the same you would do on real hardware. When I create crypt keys > > on real hardware on Linux I'm asked to perform some actions like pressing > > random keys very fast. I guess a busy (virtual) hard disk would add more > > entropy, same with a busy network interface. Such device activities > should > > trigger a lot of interrupts which can be used by the guest OS kernel to > > generate more entropy. > > > > Frank > > > >> On Wednesday 04 March 2015 00:10:09 you wrote: > >> So in a nutshell, what's the best I can do at this point without code > >> changes or waiting for the next release? I'm attempting to generate some > >> gpg keys etc and it's taking a loooong time.... > >> > >> Sent from my iPad. > >> > >>> On Mar 3, 2015, at 23:55, Frank Mehnert <[email protected]> > wrote: > >>> > >>> Johannes, > >>> > >>>> On Tuesday 03 March 2015 20:31:06 Johannes Ernst wrote: > >>>> What’s the best source of randomness for a Linux guest? > >>>> > >>>> I’ve been reading about virtio-rng [1]. Can it be made to work with > >>>> VirtualBox? > >>> > >>> VirtualBox does not support virtio-rng but I guess it's not very > >>> difficult to add this feature. I'm more worried about support for > >>> hosts/guests different than Linux. > >>> > >>> The source for entropy in a virtual machine is in principle the > >>> same like on bare metal, for instance device interrupts and their > >>> distribution over time, several clocks and the time stamp counter. > >>> VirtualBox tries very hard (and this will be even improved in the > >>> next major release) to provide the guest sensible values when > >>> reading the time stamp counter using the RDTSC machine instruction. > >>> > >>> But I admit that the sources for entropy within a virtual machine > >>> are limited in comparison to bare metal, mainly because a guest > >>> is usually configured to have only access to virtual devices being > >>> essential for doing it's job. > >>> > >>> Frank > > > > -- > > Dr.-Ing. Frank Mehnert | Software Development Director, VirtualBox > > ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG | Werkstr. 24 | 71384 Weinstadt, Germany > > > > Hauptverwaltung: Riesstr. 25, D-80992 München > > Registergericht: Amtsgericht München, HRA 95603 > > Geschäftsführer: Jürgen Kunz > > > > Komplementärin: ORACLE Deutschland Verwaltung B.V. > > Hertogswetering 163/167, 3543 AS Utrecht, Niederlande > > Handelsregister der Handelskammer Midden-Niederlande, Nr. 30143697 > > Geschäftsführer: Alexander van der Ven, Astrid Kepper, Val Maher > > _______________________________________________ > vbox-dev mailing list > [email protected] > https://www.virtualbox.org/mailman/listinfo/vbox-dev > -- -Alexey Eromenko "Technologov"
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