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Re: /dev/random



On Fri, Aug 01, 2014 at 01:50:44AM +0200, Bzzzz wrote:
> On Thu, 31 Jul 2014 16:41:01 -0700
> "" <pecondon@mesanetworks.net> wrote:
> 
> > whatever experience you want to share.
> 
> use haveged, it feeds /dev/random with a reservoir.

I'd like to chime in that I recently installed haveged myself and have
seen a massive increase in available entropy.

Haveged, as I understand it basically runs a fairly complex calculation
(with lots of branches and things) in a loop. Because almost all CPUs
these days are complex beasts, the time to perform the calculation
varies with each loop (sometimes because of cache misses, or maybe a
branch was optimized differently). Haveged monitors the differences in
these times and populates a random pool based on it. This is then fed in
to the kernel as another source of entropy.

Haveged is amazingly useful on headless or virtual or appliance
machines.

> 
> -- 
> Pazns: U don't know about the drawer method?
> Pazns: U take your schoolbag, empty it in a drawer, close it,
>        hop! clean up done!
> Zeeln: Yeah but my drawers are all full…
> Pazns: U don't know about the trash method?


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