I was about to reply along this line earlier today, before I googled "urandom"... Assuming it works similarly on all *nix systems (which, I realize, could be a big assumption), both urandom and random pull from the entropy pool; the only difference being that random blocks when it runs out, whereas urandom forges ahead with a pseudo-random generator. At least, that's how I interpreted what I read.
~B > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Behalf Of Michael Tharp > Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 7:54 PM > To: Triangle Linux Users Group discussion list > Subject: Re: [TriLUG] need help, netcat as a traffic generator? > > > Aaron S. Joyner wrote: > > Just to throw in another data point, you could also use /dev/zero, which > > will give you an endless stream of zeros. If you don't care about what > > the data is (ie. don't need it to be at least moderately random), using > > /dev/zero won't needlessly deplete your systems source of random). > > > > Aaron S. Joyner > > > Does urandom even use entropy? I thought it was an independent > pseudo-random generator, unlike /dev/random which will block until it > gets enough entropy. > -- > TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug > TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ > TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ > -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/
