Re: Random seed and possible blocking of /dev/random

[Richard Levitte - VMS Whacker]

From: Lutz Jaenicke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Lutz.Jaenicke> I don't know how select() would act on a regular
Lutz.Jaenicke> file. /dev/random (and/or /dev/urandom) are no regular
Lutz.Jaenicke> files, so we could first call stat() and only continue
Lutz.Jaenicke> when S_ISCHR() is true (character device).

This made me think that the next step would perhaps be to have
RAND_load_file() be a little more selective on how much it should
really try to read for files others than regular files.  S_ISREG() is
the perfect tool to differ between the two.  For regular files, it
would read until EOF, for all others, it would read only, say, a
couple of blocks or something (perhaps the value used before we
started going to EOF?), perhaps using the same select() mechanism as
is now in the Unixly RAND_poll().

Comment?  Hoorays?  Boooh?

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