/dev/random

[sandyd]

whats in /dev/random thats capable of throwing out so much random data to us? ;)

[FuturePilot]

A little hamster on a wheel. ;)

Actually I think that stuff is generated from things like mouse movement, key presses, hard disk movement, etc

[sandyd]

it is generated from user movements of mouse, keyboard input, .etc.etc..


thats why gpg tells you to move your mouse, type stuff and use the hard disk while its generating keys. sometimes, i don't move them or do enough stuff and the little hamster complains :)

[MaxIBoy]

Hmm.

I thought /dev/random collected white noise from components on the motherboard, especially the NIC and data from the Internet. Seems plausible to me, since a lot of devices are expected to deal with, and correct for, a baseline level of data corruption. Also, if you have a wifi card, why not pick up data from naturally occurring radio waves and filter out anything that makes sense?

[smartboyathome]

Actually I think that stuff is generated from things like mouse movement, key presses, hard disk movement, etc

I thought that was GPG that did that. :confused:

[Kopachris]

Hmm.

I thought /dev/random collected white noise from components on the motherboard, especially the NIC and data from the Internet. Seems plausible to me, since a lot of devices are expected to deal with, and correct for, a baseline level of data corruption. Also, if you have a wifi card, why not pick up data from naturally occurring radio waves and filter out anything that makes sense?
That is (according to Wikipedia, at least) correct. It's all about noise. :popcorn:

[swoll1980]

If I told you I would have to kill you.

[FuturePilot]

I thought that was GPG that did that. :confused:

when you create a gpg key, gpg uses /dev/random to generate the key.

[etnlIcarus]

/dev/random exists so that someone will create a thread on a forum somewhere, asking what /dev/random is used for. Someone else will then post, "lol, random", and crazy hijinks will inevitably ensue.