xref: /openbsd-src/share/man/man4/viornd.4 (revision 01a6998a3e2dfec15942f7f9abccfc0bb1ba8810)
1.\"     $OpenBSD: viornd.4,v 1.2 2015/02/17 16:29:16 bentley Exp $
2.\"
3.\" Copyright (c) 2014 Stefan Fritsch <sf@sfritsch.de>
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5.\" Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
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17.Dd $Mdocdate: February 17 2015 $
18.Dt VIORND 4
19.Os
20.Sh NAME
21.Nm viornd
22.Nd VirtIO random number device
23.Sh SYNOPSIS
24.Cd "viornd* at virtio? flags 0x00"
25.Sh DESCRIPTION
26The
27.Nm
28driver provides a virtual random number generator using a
29.Xr virtio 4
30entropy device provided by QEMU 1.3 and later, and possibly by other
31hypervisors.
32.Pp
33As there is currently no way for
34.Nm
35to determine how much entropy is needed, the second byte of the flags value
36can be used to configure how often it should request more entropy from the
37host.
38If the second lowest byte of the flags has a value from 1 to 15,
39.Nm
40will ask for 16 bytes of entropy every 15 * (1 << value) seconds.
41For example, flags == 0x100 means an interval of 30 seconds,
420x500 means 8 minutes, 0xa00 means 256 minutes, and 0xf00 means about 6 days.
43For flags == 0, a default value will be used (currently 8 minutes).
44If the bit 0x1000 is set in the flags,
45.Nm
46will only request entropy from the host once during system boot.
47.Sh SEE ALSO
48.Xr intro 4 ,
49.Xr virtio 4
50.Sh HISTORY
51The
52.Nm
53driver first appeared in
54.Ox 5.5 .
55.Sh AUTHORS
56.An -nosplit
57The
58.Nm
59driver was written by
60.An Stefan Fritsch Aq Mt sf@sfritsch.de .
61