[onerng talk] Blinking LED

[Paul Campbell]

On Thu, 18 Jun 2015 11:37:08 James Cameron wrote:
>I think I see what you mean.  There is an accumulation, but there's an
>averaging as well.  An incrementing counter tracks test failures.  The
>counter is decremented every 1000 test successes.  A time averaging
>filter that is very sensitive to short term failures.

>25 failures are needed at a rate exceeding one per 1000 tests, but
>they need not be consecutive; they can be spread among 25000 tests.

yes that's the thing the failures are random, sometimes they are close 
together

remember we're not trying to create a good RNG, that's more of a side effect, 
what we're really trying to make is good entropy which is subtly different 
thing

> > We've talked about creating an option that runs OneRNG data through
> > OpenSSL AES (with a fixed key) to further whiten the incoming data -
> > you might want to try this and see if it solves your problem
> 
> Don't like the complexity.  I'd be more inclined to increase
> MAX_RNG_FAILURES (25) or decrease RNG_OK_CREDIT (1000), or rewrite the
> filter.

I think that's a great idea .... for you. 

It doesn't solve the problem for people who just want to do a simple install 
today - I think I'll probably do that this weekend - but I'll also add an 
entry in /etc/onerng.conf that lets you choose to turn it off

	Paul