Re: Entropy Pool Contents

[Gunter Ohrner <G.Ohrner@post.rwth-aachen.de>]

Phillip Susi wrote:
>> I'm mainly wondering why writing stuff to /dev/*random does not change
>> the entropy from zero to at least any low non-zero value...
> I ran into this the other day myself and when I investigated the kernel
> code, I found that writes to /dev/random do accept the data into the
> entropy pool, but do NOT update the entropy estimate.  In order to do

Heck, you're right.

Thanks, that's just the answer I was looking for.

> that, you have to use a root only ioctl to add the data and update the
> estimate.  I am not sure why this is, or if there is a tool already
> written somewhere to use this ioctl, maybe someone else can comment?

rngd seems to do, from reading the documentation.

Greetings,

  Gunter