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Date:      Wed, 25 Feb 1998 10:58:51 -0500 (EST)
From:      "David E. Cross" <dec@phoenix.its.rpi.edu>
To:        freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   /dev/random isn't
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.96.980225105444.10984A-100000@phoenix.its.rpi.edu>

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I use /dev/random for a number of things that require secure random
numbers.  I recently noticed though that /dev/random seemed to be missing
large chunks of the region.  I decided to capture the random data, and 
construct a histogram of it.  What I found was a bell curve (?!?!?!?),
with a slightly large (but acceptable) SD of 0.17; however the low and
high ends were 55 and 77 SDs away from the mean!

Can anyone else verify this, do I need to change my rndcontrol IRQs?
(currently set to the IRQ addresses of my Ethernet cards per the
rndcontrol man page)

Thank you
--
David Cross


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