15 lines
895 B
Text
15 lines
895 B
Text
Crypt::Random is an interface module to the /dev/random device found on most
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modern Unix systems. The /dev/random driver gathers environmental noise from
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various non-deterministic sources including inter-keyboard timings and
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inter-interrupt timings that occur within the operating system environment.
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The /dev/random driver maintains an estimate of true randomness in the pool and
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decreases it every time random strings are requested for use. When the estimate
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goes down to zero, the routine blocks and waits for the occurrence of
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non-deterministic events to refresh the pool.
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The /dev/random kernel module also provides another interface, /dev/urandom,
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that does not wait for the entropy-pool to recharge and returns as many bytes
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as requested. /dev/urandom is considerably faster at generation compared to
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/dev/random, which should be used only when very high quality randomness is
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desired.
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