Alternate egd socket

Dave Dykstra dwd at bell-labs.com
Fri Feb 11 08:19:51 CET 2000


On Thu, Feb 10, 2000 at 10:11:15PM +0100, Werner Koch wrote:
> > Cool, thanks.  That will permit fast, convenient --encrypt without any
> > superuser intervention on machines that don't have /dev/random.  After that
> 
> Better get at least _some_bytes from EGD and use an option to disable
> it entirely.

SSH has a function random_acquire_light_environmental_noise() which it
uses in addition to using the seed file before selecting a session key.
It first tries to get a small amount from /dev/random but if that is
not available it uses various system calls.  That kind of approach
could be taken if EGD is not available (that is, in module rndunix).

- Dave Dykstra



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