[Nottingham] Very slow dd if=/dev/random

Jon Masters nottingham at mailman.lug.org.uk
Tue Jul 29 11:18:01 2003


On 29 Jul 2003, Ben Blackburne wrote:

> Just a guess really - /dev/random requires generating random numbers
> which I think are "truly" random - they come from an entropy store
> generated by mouse movements, network activity etc.

Unfortunately most network activity is regarded as non-sufficiently random
in that it could be hypothetically controllable so is not normally used.

Jon.