2010/12/23 Clint Pachl <pa...@ecentryx.com>:
> The last time I installed FreeBSD about 5 years ago, it asked me to pound on
> the keyboard for like 60 seconds during installation (or at first boot,
> can't remember) in order to build up some "randomness". I wonder what kind
> of entropy that provided?

run it through a hash function and it's a good value. Patch that value
into the kernel and it's available from the start of the kernel. Then
use that value as a key for a HMAC, to hash time values (and other
entropy). Do all that and you have a good seed for a PRNG.
Unpredictable, different every time, different on all systems.

Regards
Kurt Knochner

http://knochner.com

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