[42617] in Cypherpunks
Re: /dev/random for FreeBSD [was: Re: /dev/random for Linux]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perry E. Metzger)
Tue Oct 31 20:13:37 1995
To: tomw@cthulhu.engr.sgi.com
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 31 Oct 1995 08:48:54 PST."
<199510311648.IAA05877@orac.engr.sgi.com>
Reply-To: perry@piermont.com
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 1995 19:25:20 -0500
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Tom Weinstein writes:
> One problem with this scheme is that if multiple processes have
> /dev/random open you can block unexpectedly. If I try to avoid blocking
> by first checking if entropy is available there's a race condition if
> another process reads from the device. Is there another way to avoid
> blocking?
Yeah. Use non-blocking I/O. Its in every version of Unix I've touched
for over a decade.
.pm
