On Fri, May 05, 2006 at 11:32:18PM +1000, Mike Lake wrote:
> My machine has this:
> 
> ~$ ls -l /dev/uran*
> cr--r--r--  1 root root 1, 9 Jun 20  2002 /dev/urandom
> 
> ~$ ls -l /dev/ran*
> crw-rw-rw-  1 root root 1, 8 Jun 20  2002 /dev/random

> Why is one writable by all and the other not ?

I think both should be 666.  IIRC, if you write to urandom, it gives
the pseudo random generator a new seed.  Your boot scripts might do
something to it.

> If I do as root 'ln -s /dev/random /dev/urandom' what might it screw up?

Nothing; random is a true random device, and the urandom a
pseudo-random device.  There is a small security issue when you don't
use true random numbers, but this is largely theoretical.

> How can I go back again and create the character device?

man mknod

-i

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