PADLOCK(4)

📦 version 12.2, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 PADLOCK(4) — the Kernel Interfaces Manual glow-up 💖

bestie, gather round, because we're talking about padlock — the driver for the cryptographic functions and RNG in VIA C3, C7 and Eden processors. yes, that's the whole name, and yes it ate. 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

padlock — driver for the cryptographic functions and RNG in VIA C3, C7 and Eden processors 💅

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

okay so if you wanna compile this driver into the kernel, you literally just drop these lines into your kernel configuration file:

device crypto
device padlock

or, if you're more of a load-it-at-boot-time girly, you can load the driver as a module by putting this line in loader.conf(5):

padlock_load="YES"

no cap, that's it. ✨

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so the C3 and Eden processor series from VIA? they include hardware acceleration for AES. iconic.

the C7 series goes even harder and includes hardware acceleration for AES, SHA1, SHA256 and RSA. slay.

and all of the above processor series include a hardware random number generator. every single one. 💜

the padlock driver registers itself to accelerate AES operations and, if available, HMAC/SHA1 and HMAC/SHA256 for crypto(4). main character energy fr fr.

it also registers itself to accelerate other HMAC algorithms — even though there is no hardware acceleration for those algorithms. lowkey weird but it's fine: this is only needed so padlock can work with ipsec(4). iykyk. 🌸

and the hardware random number generator? it supplies data for the kernel random(4) subsystem. feeding the vibes directly into the kernel. 🎀

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

go read them, bestie, they're all part of the lore. 👑

📜 HISTORY 📜

the padlock driver first appeared in OpenBSD. and the first FreeBSD release to include it was FreeBSD 6.0. throwback moment. 😭

💖 AUTHORS 💖

the padlock driver with AES encryption support was written by Jason Wright <jason@OpenBSD.org>. then it was ported to FreeBSD and extended to support SHA1 and SHA256 by Pawel Jakub Dawidek <pjd@FreeBSD.org>. and this manual page was written by Christian Brueffer <brueffer@FreeBSD.org>. absolute legends, all of them. 🫶

💀 reminder, bestie: every option, path, and name up there is exact — don't go freestyling them, fr fr.

and that's the whole page!! this little love letter landed in the Debian stack on February 8, 2010 — shoutout to the Debian crew for keeping the lore alive. bye bestie, go encrypt something responsibly 💅✨🌸

📦 where this page comes from