Document evutil_secure_rng_init() and evutil_secure_rng_add_bytes()

This commit is contained in:
Nick Mathewson 2010-03-04 01:14:32 -05:00
parent f980716707
commit a5bf43abb0

View File

@ -532,8 +532,38 @@ const char *evutil_gai_strerror(int err);
*/
void evutil_secure_rng_get_bytes(void *buf, size_t n);
/**
* Seed the secure random number generator if needed, and return 0 on
* success or -1 on failure.
*
* It is okay to call this function more than once; it will still return
* 0 if the RNG has been successfully seeded and -1 if it can't be
* seeded.
*
* Ordinarily you don't need to call this function from your own code;
* Libevent will seed the RNG itself the first time it needs good random
* numbers. You only need to call it if (a) you want to double-check
* that one of the seeding methods did succeed, or (b) you plan to drop
* the capability to seed (by chrooting, or dropping capabilities, or
* whatever), and you want to make sure that seeding happens before your
* program loses the ability to do it.
*/
int evutil_secure_rng_init(void);
/** Seed the random number generator with extra random bytes.
You should almost never need to call this function; it should be
sufficient to invoke evutil_secure_rng_init(), or let Libevent take
care of calling evutil_secure_rng_init() on its own.
If you call this function as a _replacement_ for the regular
entropy sources, then you need to be sure that your input
contains a fairly large amount of strong entropy. Doing so is
notoriously hard: most people who try get it wrong. Watch out!
@param dat a buffer full of a strong source of random numbers
@param datlen the number of bytes to read from datlen
*/
void evutil_secure_rng_add_bytes(const char *dat, size_t datlen);
#ifdef __cplusplus