Re: /dev/random broken?

Justin Pryzby
2003-06-29T02:01:59Z

/dev/urandom is what you want; it makes up its own entropy. /dev/random
uses entropy from user input (low order bits I imagine). I assume that
this is how other unixes work, too.

Justin

On Sun, Jun 29, 2003 at 02:16:02AM +0000, Luca T. wrote:
>
> Hello,
> i am not sure if this is a kernel/module problem but so it seems to me.
> My computer is an AMD 2000+ with an ABIT motherboard, my kernel version
> is 2.4.21-0.13mdk (but i tried it with 2.4.21-0.18mdk too and it doesn't
> work either).
>
> If i give this command:
> dd if=/dev/zero of=./xxx bs=1024 count=100
> it will work perfectly. But if i try to do the same reading from
> /dev/random with this command:
> dd if=/dev/random of=./xxx bs=1024 count=100
> it will just sit there and stare at me until i move the mouse... and
> then the program will exit without any error message (i checked in
> /var/log/messages too and there is no message there either about this).
>
> Is this a bug? If yes... do you have any idea that would help me fix it?
>
> Thank you,
> Luca
>
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