Re: Continuing /dev/random problems with 2.4

Martin Dalecki
2002-02-02T21:03:11Z

David Wagner wrote:

>Peter Monta wrote:
>
>>Many motherboards have on-board sound. Why not turn the mic
>>gain all the way up and use the noise---surely there will be
>>a few bits' worth?
>>
>
>That may be reasonable, but beware: there are some potential pitfalls.
>For instance, is there a risk that the audio data you read is strongly
>correlated to 60Hz mains noise in some scenarios? Also, my understanding
>is that the quality of randomness you get can depend on which sound card
>you have, and moreover that the left and right channels can be strongly
>correlated (audio-entropyd takes the difference between the two).
>I think there are some things you can do, but it seems that one might
>want to be a bit careful here.
>
There is no need to speculate here - just please do aan autocorrelation
of the signal with grace for example and
laugh at the idea ;-).