Re: [LI] /dev/random & /dev/urandom - d..uh what is it?????

[Sitaram Chamarty <sitaram@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Jan 19, 2000 at 09:26:56AM +0700, Pankaj Mathur wrote:

> just now came across two things called /dev/random & /dev/urandom. Out of 
> curiosity I did cat for both of them and my screen was filled with all 
> garbled stuff. What are these anyway and what possible use it has on an OS?

Both are random number generators.  One picks it up from the
system's entropy pool (what exactly that is I don't know - but it
makes the numbers truly random and almost impossible to
sequence-predict).  The uses are in random key generation for
stuff like session keys (ssh, PGP, and the like) as well as (just
as important for some people) for games.

More info (or better presented info) can be had from "man 4 random".
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