* Jamie Carl ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> Ok peeps, here an interesting one. It's got me stumped.
> I have a passwd program which access /dev/random before it changes a
> users password. Thing is hangs for no reason before completing.
>
> Running strace passwd tells me that when it tries to read from
> /dev/random it just hangs.
>
> Has anyone seen this before???
>
> I'm trying to upgrade my kernel to see if that fixes it but seeing as
> it's stable as it is now and is a live mission critical server, I'm
> a little reluctant to do this. Therefore i was after an alternative
> fix. But I will rebuild the kernel if that's what it takes.
/dev/random is generated from mouse events, disk IO, keyboard activity
etc. This is intended to create "more random" numbers. The behaviour
of /dev/random is to wait for new events before delivering. That is
why there is the alternative, /dev/urandom. When /dev/urandom runs out
of events, it defaults to pseudo-random numbers, and so will never
hang.
Tom.
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