From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Feb 20 17:24:32 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4F53516A67F for ; Tue, 20 Feb 2007 17:24:32 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from tom.hurst@clara.net) Received: from spork.qfe3.net (spork.qfe3.net [212.13.207.101]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1391C13C4B2 for ; Tue, 20 Feb 2007 17:24:31 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from tom.hurst@clara.net) Received: from [81.104.144.87] (helo=voi.aagh.net) by spork.qfe3.net with esmtp (Exim 4.66 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1HJYOv-000Pc6-2U; Tue, 20 Feb 2007 17:03:37 +0000 Received: from freaky by voi.aagh.net with local (Exim 4.66 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1HJYOm-000Dkb-Sh; Tue, 20 Feb 2007 17:03:28 +0000 Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2007 17:03:28 +0000 From: Thomas Hurst To: Bill Moran Message-ID: <20070220170328.GA51253@voi.aagh.net> Mail-Followup-To: Bill Moran , Volker , freebsd-stable@freebsd.org, Kris Kennaway References: <45D9FD35.6040702@vwsoft.com> <20070219195143.GA42379@xor.obsecurity.org> <45DA121E.1040803@vwsoft.com> <20070220091238.c04cfceb.wmoran@collaborativefusion.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20070220091238.c04cfceb.wmoran@collaborativefusion.com> Organization: Not much. User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.13 (2006-08-11) Sender: Thomas Hurst Cc: Volker , freebsd-stable@freebsd.org, Kris Kennaway Subject: Re: getting garbage faster using FreeBSD? X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2007 17:24:32 -0000 * Bill Moran (wmoran@collaborativefusion.com) wrote: > Are you actually using /dev/random and not /dev/urandom? > > /dev/random is "military grade" random data. It will block if it > feels that it hasn't gathered enough entropy to satisfy your request. > It will never provide random data at any reasonable speed, but it will > provide high-quality random data. > > If you need lost of random data, use /dev/urandom, which provides data > that _may_ be predictable under some circumstances, but will provide > it at a decent rate of speed. This hasn't been true since FreeBSD 5 and the introduction of Yarrow; /dev/random and /dev/urandom are one in the same: lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 6 Jan 1 1970 /dev/urandom -> random -% dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/null bs=1M count=512 512+0 records in 512+0 records out 536870912 bytes transferred in 9.997684 secs (53699528 bytes/sec) -% dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/null bs=1M count=512 512+0 records in 512+0 records out 536870912 bytes transferred in 10.036211 secs (53493386 bytes/sec) -- Thomas 'Freaky' Hurst http://hur.st/