From owner-freebsd-arch Wed Jan 10 2:21:38 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from gratis.grondar.za (grouter.grondar.za [196.7.18.65]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2D90937B401; Wed, 10 Jan 2001 02:21:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from grondar.za (root@gratis.grondar.za [196.7.18.133]) by gratis.grondar.za (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id f0AAKsI03830; Wed, 10 Jan 2001 12:20:57 +0200 (SAST) (envelope-from mark@grondar.za) Message-Id: <200101101020.f0AAKsI03830@gratis.grondar.za> To: Dag-Erling Smorgrav Cc: Dan Moschuk , arch@FreeBSD.ORG, markm@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Keeping an /entropy file References: In-Reply-To: ; from Dag-Erling Smorgrav "10 Jan 2001 11:10:39 +0100." Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 12:21:26 +0200 From: Mark Murray Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > Dan Moschuk writes: > > Without too big of a bikeshed, what does everyone think of either > > adding a system crontab or modifying the random device itself to generate > > /entropy at a specified interval? > > Doesn't that consume a largish amount of entropy? If so, I don't think > it's a very good idea. It's mandated by the Yarrow algorithm, and it ensures a safe startup. Yarrow is resistant to entropy starvation, so the concept of "emptying the pool" is far less important than the ability to recover encryption keys of the ciphers used. M -- Mark Murray Warning: this .sig is umop ap!sdn To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message