From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG  Fri May 31 12:26:41 2013
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Subject: Re: seeding randomness in zee cloud
From: Dirk-Willem van Gulik <dirkx@webweaving.org>
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Date: Fri, 31 May 2013 14:26:39 +0200
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Op 31 mei 2013, om 14:02 heeft RW <rwmaillists@googlemail.com> het =
volgende geschreven:

> On Fri, 31 May 2013 12:01:02 +0200 Dirk-Willem van Gulik wrote:
>> 	# Seed Software random generator
>> 	#
>> 	cat rnd > /dev/random
>=20
> To be on the safe side you should sleep for about 0.5 seconds after
> this=20
>=20
>>=20
>> 	# Activate software random generator as an additional source
>> 	sysctl kern.random.sys.harvest.swi=3D1
>=20
> IIRC this doesn't do anything

Thanks.  So the man page says:

     The kern.random.sys.harvest.swi variable is used to select software
     interrupts as an entropy source.  A 0 (zero) value means software =
inter-
     rupts are not considered as an entropy source.  Set the variable to =
1
     (one) if you wish to use them for entropy harvesting.

but it is fair to assume that even when it is set to '0' (the default =
observerd on 9.1-RELEASE) - that the randomness sent to /dev/random is =
still mixed in ?

Thanks,

Dw.