Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 21 Oct 2003 19:56:02 -0700 | From | jw schultz <> | Subject | Re: [RFC] frandom - fast random generator module |
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On Tue, Oct 21, 2003 at 06:06:02PM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote: > Followup to: <bn4aov$jf7$1@gatekeeper.tmr.com> > By author: davidsen@tmr.com (bill davidsen) > In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel > > | > > | Bullshit. "myrng 36 | foo" works just fine. > > > > myrng?? That doesn't seem to be part of the bash I have, or any > > distribution I could check, and google shows a bunch of visual basic > > results rather than anything useful. > > > > If you're suggesting that every user write their own program to > > generate random numbers, then write a script to call it, that kind of > > defeats the purpose of doing shell instead of writing a program, doesn't > > it? Not to mention that to get entropy the user program will have to > > call the devices anyway. > > > > I think this could also fail the objective of returning unique results > > in an SMP system, but that's clearly imprementation dependent. > > > > No, I mean that putting a piece of code in the kernel "so it can be > accessed from shell scripts" is idiotic. Make a binary of it and put > it in the filesystem.
Not to mention that some (bash the most common) shells have a PRNG built-in. As does perl and i'm sure python and any other higher-than-shell scripting language.
I'm convinced we don't need another device. This might still be an alternative (build time selected) for the PRNG in the existing /dev/urandom if someone is that concerned with PRNG overhead.
I am curious how someone is going to use random data from a device in a shell with the possible exception of "dd if=/dev/urandom of=/some/file" given that they emit a binary stream not numerals.
-- ________________________________________________________________ J.W. Schultz Pegasystems Technologies email address: jw@pegasys.ws
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