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From: daw@taverner.cs.berkeley.edu (David Wagner)
Newsgroups: isaac.lists.linux-kernel
Subject: Re: short read from /dev/urandom
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2005 05:56:41 +0000 (UTC)
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Ulrich Drepper  wrote:
>The /dev/urandom device is advertised as always returning the requested 
>number of bytes.

True.  Arguably, the solution is to fix the documentation.
Why not make /dev/urandom like every other kind of fd in the world,
and make no promises about whether a read() will always return as
many bytes as requested?  Is there any reason /dev/urandom fds special?