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Message-ID: <35fb2e5904112914476df48518@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 22:47:29 +0000
From: Jon Masters <jonmasters@gmail.com>
Reply-To: jonathan@jonmasters.org
To: Bernard Normier <bernard@zeroc.com>
Subject: Re: Concurrent access to /dev/urandom
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
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On Sat, 27 Nov 2004 15:45:49 -0500, Bernard Normier <bernard@zeroc.com> wrote:

> I use /dev/urandom to generate UUIDs by reading 16 random bytes from
> /dev/urandom (very much like e2fsprogs' libuuid).

Why not use /dev/random for such data instead?

/dev/urandom suffers from a poor level of entropy if you keep reading
from it over and over again whereas the alternative can block until it
has more randomness available.

Cheers,

Jon.
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