On Sat, Feb 12, 2005 at 11:29:12PM +0200, Oded Arbel wrote:
> 
> Hi list.

> I configured all applications I could to use /dev/urandom but some I was 
> unable too. I read in several places on the web that one can either 
> symlink /dev/random to /dev/urandom or simply change the major and minor 
> device id of /dev/random to that of /dev/urandom and there by solving the 
> problem by using a slightly less secure source of randomness.
> 
> The problem I'm having is that neither solution works for me - I failed to 
> symlink or recreate the device node because for some reason I cannot remove 
> the current /dev/random. Even after I stop all programs that use it (and 
> check using lsof), every time I try to rm /dev/random, I get the error 
> "Operation not permitted". 

Are you root? is something using it? are you using devfs and/or udev?

> And if we are on the subject - is it possible to feed entropy (from a trusted 
> source of course) into /dev/random so that it is available to applications ? 
> I was thinking about getting random bits from lavarand or random.org to fuel 
> my server's /dev/random.

It should be doable, yes.
Another alternative is to verify that the drivers you are using
(specifically NIC and disk drives) are set to provide entropy (there's
a driver flag for it, can't remember what it's called right now)

Cheers, 
Muli
-- 
Muli Ben-Yehuda
http://www.mulix.org | http://mulix.livejournal.com/

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