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Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2007 02:01:26 +0100
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Subject: Re: /dev/random question
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On Sat, 15 Sep 2007 00:44:10 -0700
"Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> wrote:
> Since FreeBSD tries to be close to perfect ;-) it uses a better
> random driver that can produce random numbers as fast as you want
> them.  The symlink is there only as a crutch for older UNIX code
> that was written when there was a difference between /dev/random
> and /dev/urandom

Personally I think it would have been better to name the yarrow device
as /dev/urandom and create a new device, say  /dev/entropy , which would
function as a traditional /dev/random. One would then have the choice
of linking /dev/random to either /dev/entropy or /dev/urandom. And in
the second case /dev/entropy would still be availible in special cases. 

Essentially what has happened is that /dev/random has been abandoned in
favour of a better /dev/urandom, and that seems to be a bit high-handed
to me.