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Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2007 18:47:21 -0500
From: Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>
To: Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu>
Cc: Jeff Garzik <jeff@garzik.org>, Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com>,
       Mike McGrath <mmcgrath@redhat.com>,
       Jon Masters <jonathan@jonmasters.org>,
       Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>, Ray Lee <ray@madrabbit.org>,
       Adrian Bunk <bunk@kernel.org>,
       Marc Haber <mh+linux-kernel@zugschlus.de>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
       hmh@debian.org
Subject: Re: entropy gathering (was Re: Why does reading from /dev/urandom
	deplete entropy so much?)
Message-ID: <20071208234721.GR17037@thunk.org>
Mail-Followup-To: Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>, Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu>,
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	Adrian Bunk <bunk@kernel.org>,
	Marc Haber <mh+linux-kernel@zugschlus.de>,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, hmh@debian.org
References: <20071204223345.GJ19691@waste.org> <4756B50B.3060100@redhat.com> <20071205144934.GL7259@thunk.org> <1197099477.20786.149.camel@perihelion> <20071208173204.GI17037@thunk.org> <475AD585.7020908@redhat.com> <20071208174908.GJ17037@thunk.org> <20071208181525.GL19691@waste.org> <475AF241.5000809@garzik.org> <20071208204239.GG15227@1wt.eu>
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On Sat, Dec 08, 2007 at 09:42:39PM +0100, Willy Tarreau wrote:
> I remember having installed openssh on an AIX machines years ago, and
> being amazed by the number of sources it collected entropy from. Simple
> commands such as "ifconfig -a", "netstat -i" and "du -a", "ps -ef", "w"
> provided a lot of entropy.

Well.... not as many bits of entropy as you might think.  But every
little bit helps, especially if some of it is not available to
adversary.

							- Ted
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