Re: advapi32: Fall back to /dev/random if /dev/urandom can't be opened, and add warnings if opening either fails

[Austin English]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 1:13 PM, Juan Lang <juan.lang(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Let me know if you think the fallback is a bad idea, or if a FIXME is
> more appropriate than a WARN here.
> --Juan

FWIW: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urandom

"/dev/random and /dev/urandom are also available on Solaris, Mac OS X,
NetBSD, OpenBSD, Tru64 UNIX 5.1B, AIX 5.2, and HP-UX 11i v2, however
as with FreeBSD, AIX implements its own Yarrow-based design which uses
considerably less entropy sources than the standard /dev/random
implementation and stops refilling the pool when it thinks it contains
enough entropy.[2]"

"A software program called EGD (entropy gathering daemon) is a common
alternative for Unix systems which do not support the /dev/random
device. It is a user space daemon which provides high quality
cryptographic random data. Some cryptographic software such as
OpenSSL, GNU Privacy Guard, and the Apache HTTP Server support using
EGD when a /dev/random device is not available."

-- 
-Austin

advapi32: Fall back to /dev/random if /dev/urandom can't be opened, and add warnings if opening either fails

[Juan Lang]

Hi Austin,
> FWIW: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urandom
> (snip)
> "A software program called EGD (entropy gathering daemon) is a common
> alternative for Unix systems which do not support the /dev/random
> device.

Yep, I know.  The problem with using EGD is that there isn't a
standard path to it.  Because /dev/urandom is so commonly available,
adding a configuration option and code for such a rarely used feature
didn't seem worth it.

Thanks,
--juan