Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2007 02:01:26 +0100 From: RW <fbsd06@mlists.homeunix.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: /dev/random question Message-ID: <20070916020126.06cf26ac@gumby.homeunix.com.> In-Reply-To: <BMEDLGAENEKCJFGODFOCCEGHCAAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com> References: <20070913153630.GA9448@slackbox.xs4all.nl> <BMEDLGAENEKCJFGODFOCCEGHCAAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com>
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On Sat, 15 Sep 2007 00:44:10 -0700 "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> wrote: > Since FreeBSD tries to be close to perfect ;-) it uses a better > random driver that can produce random numbers as fast as you want > them. The symlink is there only as a crutch for older UNIX code > that was written when there was a difference between /dev/random > and /dev/urandom Personally I think it would have been better to name the yarrow device as /dev/urandom and create a new device, say /dev/entropy , which would function as a traditional /dev/random. One would then have the choice of linking /dev/random to either /dev/entropy or /dev/urandom. And in the second case /dev/entropy would still be availible in special cases. Essentially what has happened is that /dev/random has been abandoned in favour of a better /dev/urandom, and that seems to be a bit high-handed to me.
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