cryptodev-linux-comp (cryptodev-linux with compression support)

This repository contains a fork of cryptodev-linux with compression support, which allows accessing hardware compressors from userspace.

The main aim of this fork is allowing access to the 842 hardware compressor available on Intel POWER7+ machines. For more complete information, you can visit the lib842 repository.

The usual build instructions for building, installing and loading the cryptodev module apply to this fork, as no new dependencies have been introduced. Additionally, 842 compression support is available on the mainline Linux kernel and will automatically use the hardware compressor on machines posessing it.

The original cryptodev README follows:

cryptodev-linux

This is a /dev/crypto device driver, equivalent to those in OpenBSD or FreeBSD. The main idea is to access existing ciphers in kernel space from userspace, thus enabling the re-use of a hardware implementation of a cipher.

For questions and suggestions, please use the homepage at https://github.com. Cryptodev-linux is hosted at https://github.com/cryptodev-linux/cryptodev-linux.

Older releases are also available at http://cryptodev-linux.org.

How to combine with cryptographic libraries

GnuTLS

GnuTLS needs to be compiled with --enable-cryptodev in order to take advantage of /dev/crypto. GnuTLS 3.0.14 or later is recommended.

OpenSSL

OpenSSL needs -DHAVE_CRYPTODEV and -DUSE_CRYPTODEV_DIGESTS flags during compilation. Note that the latter flag (digests) may induce a performance penalty in some systems.

Modifying and viewing verbosity at runtime

The verbosity of the driver often needs to be adjusted for debugging. The sysctl tool can be used for that.

# sysctl ioctl.cryptodev_verbosity
ioctl.cryptodev_verbosity = 0

# sysctl ioctl.cryptodev_verbosity=3
ioctl.cryptodev_verbosity = 3