What is cryptosoft0?

Sam Leffler
2008-08-07T00:41:02Z

Ulrich Spoerlein wrote:
> Hi,
>
> today I discovered the following dmesg line on my laptop:
>
> cryptosoft0: <software crypto> on motherboard
>
> and I've not seen this one before, so: what is cryptosoft and should I
> care?
>
> I could imagine it's a pseudo-device by crypto(9) so the API is the
same
> whether crypto hardware is installed or not.
>
> Anyway, I think a manpage link/update would be in order:
>
> % man -k cryptosoft
> cryptosoft: nothing appropriate
>
>

It is what you suggest; a device associated with s/w crypto support.  It
was created so crypto requests can be submitted specifically to it
(instead of a h/w device).  This is currently used only for testing but
the intent was also to use it when doing load-balancing and similar work.

    Sam