From: Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos Subject: Re: [PATCH v5 0/7] /dev/random - a new approach Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2016 09:12:07 +0200 Message-ID: References: <2754489.L1QYabbYUc@positron.chronox.de> <3817952.8FvMDE0Kc7@tauon.atsec.com> <20160620152838.GE9848@thunk.org> <1639356.ozYDPrS7jM@tauon.atsec.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Cc: "Theodore Ts'o" , Pavel Machek , Herbert Xu , Andi Kleen , Sandy Harris , Jason Cooper , John Denker , "H. Peter Anvin" , Joe Perches , George Spelvin , Linux Crypto Mailing List , Linux Kernel Mailing List To: Stephan Mueller Return-path: In-Reply-To: <1639356.ozYDPrS7jM@tauon.atsec.com> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-crypto.vger.kernel.org On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 5:43 PM, Stephan Mueller wrote: >> Personally, I don't really use /dev/random, nor would I recommend it >> for most application programmers. At this point, getrandom(2) really >> is the preferred interface unless you have some very specialized >> needs. > I fully agree. But there are use cases for /dev/random, notably as a seed > source for other DRNG. Is that really the case? I believe all DRNG's use /dev/urandom anyway for seeding since they cannot afford indeterminate blocking. It would be a gain for everyone if /dev/random was the same as /dev/urandom in Linux. regards, Nikos