/dev/urandom
Posted 08-29-2006 at 12:00 PM by baikonur
this is a nice-to-know.
quote from the urandom man page:
The character special files /dev/random and /dev/urandom (present since
Linux 1.3.30) provide an interface to the kernel's random number gener-
ator. File /dev/random has major device number 1 and minor device num-
ber 8. File /dev/urandom has major device number 1 and minor device
number 9.
The random number generator gathers environmental noise from device
drivers and other sources into an entropy pool. The generator also
keeps an estimate of the number of bits of noise in the entropy pool.
From this entropy pool random numbers are created.
quote from the urandom man page:
The character special files /dev/random and /dev/urandom (present since
Linux 1.3.30) provide an interface to the kernel's random number gener-
ator. File /dev/random has major device number 1 and minor device num-
ber 8. File /dev/urandom has major device number 1 and minor device
number 9.
The random number generator gathers environmental noise from device
drivers and other sources into an entropy pool. The generator also
keeps an estimate of the number of bits of noise in the entropy pool.
From this entropy pool random numbers are created.
