[dpdk-dev] [PATCH 3/6] eal: improve entropy for initial PRNG seed

[Bruce Richardson]

On Tue, May 14, 2019 at 11:36:49AM +0200, Mattias Rönnblom wrote:
> On 2019-05-14 11:20, Mattias Rönnblom wrote:
> > Replace the use of rte_get_timer_cycles() with getentropy() for
> > seeding the pseudo-random number generator. getentropy() provides a
> > more truly random value.
> > 
> 
> getentropy() doens't exist in libc versions earler than 2.25, and it also
> (like Stephen mentioned) requires the getrandom() syscall not available
> until Linux 3.17.
> 
> If this is deemed too much of a limitation, I'll change to
> /dev/urandom-based seeding.

Since we are shifting over to meson builds more and more, I'd suggest just
using function detection there with a very basic fallback (e.g. your
time-based one) for cases where the function is not supported.

/Bruce