Re: Still wondering about random numbers...

Bruno Wolff III wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 07, 2001 at 04:36:23PM +0000,
>   Thomas Lockhart <lockhart@fourpalms.org> wrote:
> >
> > configure is our friend. A better random number generator is always
> > welcome imho, and if it can be reliably supported through autoconf then
> > it would stand a chance to be included in the main tree. Especially
> > since the usage of random() seems to be very isolated in the code.
> > contrib/ is always a good first step though...
>
> 'Better' is in the eye of the beholder. /dev/random can stall for
> very long periods of time waiting for entropy.

On Intel i8x0 motherboards you can set the CONFIG_INTEL_RNG kernel parameter and access the hardware random entropy generator.

On other motherboards, reading from /dev/random can stall indefinitely.  This is not a Good Thing.  /dev/urandom is fine, but not rally better than rand(3) or random(3).

Is it actually possible to replace the built-in function?  I haven't checked.

If it is, then contrib is a fine place for the improvement.  If it isn't, then configure is probably our friend.

Just my £0.02.



Allan.