Description of problem: Applications requesting random data from /dev/random either hang, or print out the following information message: Not enough random bytes available. Please do some other work to give the OS a chance to collect more entropy! Analysis: In OEL4 and RHEL4, the e1000 module was contributing entropy to the system by passing the IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM during request_irq() calls.
Created attachment 299791 [details] bnx2 irqf_sample_random patch
This functionality (in e1000) was removed in version 2.6.9-42.28. There was an upstream update of e1000 that removes SA_SAMPLE_RANDOM flag from request_irq. Upstream bnx2 driver also does not include this functionality. To include it in RHEL kernel the incorporation into upstream is required. But I doubt about success because this is little bit problematic (see discussion http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/5/5/107).
Created attachment 328714 [details] Final patch sent to review Because the patch solving the same issue (bug #439898) for RHEL 5 seems to be acceptable for our engineers I prepared the similar patch also for RHEL 4. Now I'm going to post this patch for a review.
This request was evaluated by Red Hat Product Management for inclusion in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux maintenance release. Product Management has requested further review of this request by Red Hat Engineering, for potential inclusion in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Update release for currently deployed products. This request is not yet committed for inclusion in an Update release.
Committed in 79.EL . RPMS are available at http://people.redhat.com/vgoyal/rhel4/
An advisory has been issued which should help the problem described in this bug report. This report is therefore being closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information on therefore solution and/or where to find the updated files, please follow the link below. You may reopen this bug report if the solution does not work for you. http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2009-1024.html