Re: using /dev/random

2008-09-26 Thread RW
On Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:33:34 +0100 Kris Kennaway [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: RW wrote: On Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:52:07 -0400 kern.random.sys.seeded is just a flag that gets set to 1 on each reseed. IIRC it's also initialized to 1 so it doesn't actually do anything very useful. Except tell

Re: using /dev/random

2008-09-25 Thread Kris Kennaway
RW wrote: On Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:52:07 -0400 Lowell Gilbert [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Robert Huff [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: What is the canonical way to get data from /dev/random? Specifically: having opened the file, how do I read the stream? I'm currently using union { float

Re: using /dev/random

2008-09-23 Thread Wojciech Puchar
What is the canonical way to get data from /dev/random? Specifically: having opened the file, how do I read the stream? I'm currently using union { float f; char c[4]; } foo; foo.f = 0.0; fscanf(rand_fp,%4c,foo.c); simply read 4 bytes into foo

RE: using /dev/random

2008-09-23 Thread Ted Mittelstaedt
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Robert Huff Sent: Monday, September 22, 2008 9:54 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: using /dev/random What is the canonical way to get data from /dev/random? Specifically: having opened the

Re: using /dev/random

2008-09-23 Thread RW
On Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:51:02 -0700 Ted Mittelstaedt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The canonical way is to use the functions random(), or srandom() or srandomdev() or arc4random() depending on what you need the random data for. /dev/random is really only useful for seeding these functions (some

Re: using /dev/random

2008-09-23 Thread RW
On Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:39:35 +0100 RW [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:51:02 -0700 Ted Mittelstaedt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you really want to roll-your-own and not use these functions then you could read blocks from /dev/random and run a Chi-square and Monte Carlo

Re: using /dev/random

2008-09-23 Thread Lowell Gilbert
Robert Huff [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: What is the canonical way to get data from /dev/random? Specifically: having opened the file, how do I read the stream? I'm currently using union { float f; char c[4]; } foo; foo.f = 0.0; fscanf(rand_fp,%4c,foo.c);

Re: using /dev/random

2008-09-23 Thread Lowell Gilbert
Robert Huff [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: What is the canonical way to get data from /dev/random? Specifically: having opened the file, how do I read the stream? I'm currently using union { float f; char c[4]; } foo; foo.f = 0.0; fscanf(rand_fp,%4c,foo.c);

Re: using /dev/random

2008-09-23 Thread RW
On Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:52:07 -0400 Lowell Gilbert [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Robert Huff [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: What is the canonical way to get data from /dev/random? Specifically: having opened the file, how do I read the stream? I'm currently using union { float f;