[53324] in Cypherpunks
RNG_DEVICE Environment Variable?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Deranged Mutant)
Sat Apr 6 07:19:02 1996
From: "Deranged Mutant" <WlkngOwl@UNiX.asb.com>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 1996 07:05:06 +0000
Considering a couple of RNG hardware manufacturers use different
names for device interfaces, perhaps it would be 'convenient' to
have apps look for the environment variable RNG_DEVICE which gives
the name of whatever device is used (rnadom$, random, rand, even
lpt2...) or even a special file that is mixed periodically by a cron
job (noiz.c?).
The assumption is that reads from that device would return "truly
random" bytes (not from a pseudo-RNG), either from specialized
hardware or a system-noise sampler such as noise.sys (DOS) or
random.c (Linux, FreeBSD).
How software would handle not getting enough bytes is another matter,
perhaps left configurable to the app.
Rob.
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