From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1760563AbXE2Qot (ORCPT ); Tue, 29 May 2007 12:44:49 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1757647AbXE2Qok (ORCPT ); Tue, 29 May 2007 12:44:40 -0400 Received: from nz-out-0506.google.com ([64.233.162.224]:36930 "EHLO nz-out-0506.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751828AbXE2Qoj convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Tue, 29 May 2007 12:44:39 -0400 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=beta; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=YP5sV0CWoHmjmnkz7N14G388/DzZeBsem+/dyiGryqxqDZN72/aJFsye3LxOaB3NzH5tAlsqG3/sR3kfNyPc6Ts3lMLcTbtqxO1qdD+PhR2rhtMn+609ubAX1NkQVeQwmHBi/JdT0cOnYjuJOCgCG9nRQj+Yi+EdJEGkP8Li38g= Message-ID: Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 17:44:37 +0100 From: "M Macnair" To: "Andi Kleen" Subject: Re: Seeding /dev/random not working Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Content-Disposition: inline References: Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On 29 May 2007 18:58:59 +0200, Andi Kleen wrote: > "M Macnair" 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