Bug 68377 - random generator not initialised properly?
Summary: random generator not initialised properly?
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Linux
Classification: Retired
Component: initscripts
Version: 7.3
Hardware: i386
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Bill Nottingham
QA Contact: Brock Organ
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2002-07-09 16:27 UTC by iwi
Modified: 2014-03-17 02:28 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2002-07-09 16:27:43 UTC
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description iwi 2002-07-09 16:27:37 UTC
From the "start" section of /etc/rc.d/init.d/random

        action $"Initializing random number generator: " /bin/true
        chmod 600 $random_seed
        dd if=/dev/urandom of=$random_seed count=1 bs=512 2>/dev/null

I could be mistaken, but it appears to me that the input and output of dd are
the wrong way round for this to actually feed any entropy into the random number
generator.

Comment 1 iwi 2002-07-12 13:56:36 UTC
Closing this myself, as reporter.  This is not a bug.

I hadn't read the script carefully enough: it is a previous line that
initialises the random generator ("cat /var/tmp/random-seed >/dev/urandom").

Sorry to take your time.



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