Messages in this thread | | | From | "Sean Hunter" <> | Date | Fri, 17 Sep 1999 11:46:56 +0100 | Subject | Re: no data from /dev/random on udb alpha |
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/dev/random is a blocking device that won't write anything until it has enough entropy is in the pool to give you a strong random number. Try /dev/urandom for an immediate answer.
A fun way to test (that I just did on my alpha) is to do...
dd if=/dev/random count=2048 bs=1 | uuencode /dev/stdout
...and then wiggle your mouse around (feeding entropy into the random pool). At first I get nothing, but after a while of continuous wiggling I get one "chunk" of random stuff at a time. If I do the above with urandom I get a big splurge at a time.
It seems that on intel I get random numbers a bit easier, but as I only use xterms on the alpha, I suppose I'm not feeding enough keyboard and mouse input into the console to generate entropy. Could this be your problem?
Sean
On Fri, Sep 17, 1999 at 10:39:27AM +0200, Robin Elfrink wrote: > > Hi, > > > Can anyone tell me why there's no data from /dev/random on linux-alpha? > > > The system is an UDB Multia, running stock redhat-6.0 (kernel 2.2.5). Also > tried 2.2.11, that doesn't give anything either. > > I couldn't find anything alpha architecture specific in > drivers/char/random.c... > > > ---------- Have a nice day! ---------- > I'd explain it to you, but your brain would explode. > Robin Elfrink <r.elfrink@autosound.nl> > ASN AutoSound Nederland B.V. > IT Department > > - > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu > Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/ >
- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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