Re: randomdev entropy gathering is really weak

[Bruce Evans]

On Sun, 16 Jul 2000, Kris Kennaway wrote:

> On the other hand, doing a dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/null gives me
> infinite "randomness" at 10MB/sec - have the semantics of /dev/random
> changed?

Yes.  /dev/random is now just an alias for /dev/urandom (or vice versa).

You must have a fast machine to get 10MB/sec.  I see the following speeds
(using a better reading program than dd; dd gives up on EOF on the old
/dev/random):

old /dev/random  on P5/133                                5K/sec
old /dev/urandom on P5/133                              244K/sec
old /dev/random  on Celeron 366 overclocked to 5.5*95    25K/sec
old /dev/urandom on Celeron 366 overclocked to 5.5*95   970K/sec
new /dev/*random on Celeron 400 overclocked to 6.0*75   270K/sec

Bruce



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