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To: Brooks Davis <brooks@one-eyed-alien.net>
From: Mark Murray <markm@FreeBSD.ORG>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 28 Mar 2005 14:08:27 -0800."
             <20050328220827.GA26134@odin.ac.hmc.edu> 
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 23:33:18 +0100
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cc: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG
cc: Ed Maste <emaste@phaedrus.sandvine.ca>
Subject: Re: Random source seeding and /etc/rc.d/sshd host key generation 
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Brooks Davis writes:
> > I'm curious if checking the seeded sysctl against "" is intentional;
> > it seems $seeded will always be non-null.  Since user_reseed only
> > gets called if the host keys don't exist it probably won't be much
> > of an issue in practice, but it seems random junk will be requested
> > on the first boot even if the entropy source is already seeded.
> 
> I believe the goal of the script is to not trust the system entropy this
> time (since it's almost certainly junk.)  I think the check is just to
> avoid this code if the sysctl doesn't exist.

Close. Not all RNG's use the Yarrow-based generator. This is a test for
the presence of the Yarrow PRNG.

M
--
Mark Murray
iumop ap!sdn w,I idlaH