Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!news.glorb.com!peer01.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!spln!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!toncho.dhh.gt.org!not-for-mail From: John Hasler Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.os.linux.development.apps Subject: Re: shred or scrub Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 07:56:46 -0500 Organization: Dancing Horse Hill Lines: 20 Message-ID: <87ioq45fch.fsf@thumper.dhh.gt.org> References: <87ppkd2cx5.fsf@sable.mobileactivedefense.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: pb7be90e1b4df8c7f86a19acce4d64435ebaf0b1ecac8dc42.newsdawg.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:yx+ncIOn1bDPK5h7sWwfvECqo2E= X-Received-Bytes: 1768 X-Received-Body-CRC: 1024775880 Xref: csiph.com comp.os.linux.development.system:637 comp.os.linux.development.apps:705 crankypuss writes: > Given that "environmental static" occurs every time an interaction > with the network occurs, every time some devices are heard from, in > the elapsed time since the last request for a random number was > received on a multi-thread system, the whole idea of having > /dev/random block seems pretty silly. If there is so much entropy available then it will never block, will it? On the other hand, if it does block, there wasn't as much entropy available *on that particular system* as you thought. You'd be surprised how easy it is to run a low-activity machine out of entropy. In practice one uses random for paranoid activities such as generating important keys and urandom for everything else. You are, of course, free to use urandom to generate your new GPG key. -- John Hasler jhasler@newsguy.com Dancing Horse Hill Elmwood, WI USA