Re: no entropy and no output at /dev/random (quick question)

[Theodore Ts'o]

On Sun, Nov 28, 2004 at 05:29:45PM +1100, Herbert Xu wrote:
> David Wagner <daw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > 
> > Yes, for almost all purposes, applications should use /dev/urandom,
> > not /dev/random.  (The names for these devices are unfortunate.)
> > Sadly, many applications fail to follow these rules, and consequently
> > /dev/random's entropy pool often ends up getting depleted much faster
> > than it has to be.
> 
> I agree with your conclusion that applications should use urandom.
> However, IIRC /dev/urandom depletes the entropy pool just as fast
> as /dev/random...

More specifically, most applications should use /dev/urandom to seed a
cryptographic random number generator which operates in userspace.  

						- Ted
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