Re: [Python-Dev] writing to /dev/*random [was: BDFL ruling request: should we block ...]
> On Jun 11, 2016, at 8:16 PM, Stephen J. Turnbullwrote: > > This fails for unprivileged users on Mac. I'm not sure what happens > on Linux; it appears to succeed, but the result wasn't what I > expected. I think that on Linux it will mix in whatever you write into the entropy, but it won’t increase the entropy counter for it. — Donald Stufft ___ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Python-Dev] writing to /dev/*random [was: BDFL ruling request: should we block ...]
On 06/11/2016 05:16 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote: Use a Raspberry-Pi, or other advanced expensive hardware. There's no real excuse for not having a hardware generator if the Pi has one! Intel CPUs added the RDRAND instruction as of Ivy Bridge, although there's an ongoing debate as to whether or not it's a suitable source of entropy to use for seeding urandom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RdRand#Reception Wikipedia goes on to describe the very-new RDSEED instruction which might be more suitable. //arry/ ___ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Python-Dev] writing to /dev/*random [was: BDFL ruling request: should we block ...]
This is related to David Mertz's request for backward compatible initialization, not to the bdfl decision. Steven D'Aprano writes: > I don't think that's something which the Python interpreter ought to do > for you, but you can write to /dev/urandom or /dev/random (both keep > their own, separate, entropy pools): > > open("/dev/urandom", "w").write("hello world") This fails for unprivileged users on Mac. I'm not sure what happens on Linux; it appears to succeed, but the result wasn't what I expected. Also, when entropy gets low, it's not clear how additional entropy is allocated between the /dev/random and /dev/urandom pools. > But of course there's the question of where you're going to get a > source of noise to write to the file. While it's (probably?) > harmless to write a hard-coded string to it, I don't think its > going to give you much entropy. Use a Raspberry-Pi, or other advanced expensive hardware. There's no real excuse for not having a hardware generator if the Pi has one! I would guess you can probably get something with a USB interface for $20 or so. http://scruss.com/blog/2013/06/07/well-that-was-unexpected-the-raspberry-pis-hardware-random-number-generator/ ___ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com