Re: Concurrent access to /dev/urandom

[Jon Masters]

On Sat, 27 Nov 2004 15:45:49 -0500, Bernard Normier <bernard@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I use /dev/urandom to generate UUIDs by reading 16 random bytes from
> /dev/urandom (very much like e2fsprogs' libuuid).

Why not use /dev/random for such data instead?

/dev/urandom suffers from a poor level of entropy if you keep reading
from it over and over again whereas the alternative can block until it
has more randomness available.

Cheers,

Jon.
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/