/dev/random and /dev/urandom pool(s)?

kpeirce · 01-30-2006, 08:49 AM

I know /dev/random and /dev/urandom are treated like seperate char drivers for users. My question is, the "entropy_store input pool;" is declared as static. Is this because there are two instantiations of the pool - one for each driver, or is there a single pool and two read functions for the single pool where the urandom does the hashing thing to fulfill non-blocking requests?
I'd appreciate any help on this.
Cheers,
Ken

Artanicus · 01-30-2006, 09:33 AM

I have no idea what youre talking about, but I do know that the manualpages describe them both taking from the same entropy-pool and the difference being that urandom will give output even if the quality is suffering where as random will wait for it to get better.

kpeirce · 01-31-2006, 06:54 AM

Thanks for the pointer. I guess the man pages have finally become accurate.