Re: Seeding /dev/random not working

["M Macnair" <mmacnair@gmail.com>]

On 29 May 2007 18:58:59 +0200, Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org> wrote:
> "M Macnair" <mmacnair@gmail.com> writes:
> >
> > Many distros ship with an init script that saves and restores the
> > entropy pool on startup and shutdown.  The bit that interests me that
> > is called on startup is (my comments):
> >       if [ -f $random_seed ]; then
> >               cat $random_seed >/dev/urandom  # should seed the pool
> ^[OA
> Writing doesn't actually work; to get real accounted entropy for /dev/random
> you need to use a special ioctl. I ran into this problem some years ago
> and ended up writing http://www.muc.de/~ak/rndfeed.c
>
> -Andi

If this doesn't work, then it seems to me as though all the
debian-esque distros that use equivalents of the above script are
wasting their time, and the man page recommending that technique (man
4 random) is also wrong.  Is that interpretation correct?

Mike