On this same track, I suggest that "/dev/random" devices for unix are an excellent idea. Ted Tso did one for Linux that steals all the bits of semi-random timing information it can.
Anyone know where I can find more information on this wonderful device?
I've just sent patches (versus the Linux 1.3.28 kernel) off to Linus. There's a fairly long exposition at the beginning of drivers/char/random.c which explain its theory of operation.
A colleague drew my attention to this, and I was so pleased with it that I ported it to FreeBSD. I kept the interface as close to the original as I could, but made some changes for efficiency and ease: 1) I turned the huge comment at the top explaining the theory of operation into a man page (random(4)). 2) We felt that hooking all interrupts might be dangerous. IDE drives can interrupt at a heck of a rate, and so can some serial ports, and we felt that in these cases _not_ using the interrupt was a good idea. So I added an ioctl to allow the superuser to select his own set, appropriate to the hardware in use. It is nearly impossible to do this automatically. Gimme a yell if you want copies :-) M -- Mark Murray 46 Harvey Rd, Claremont, Cape Town 7700, South Africa +27 21 61-3768 GMT+0200 Finger mark@grumble.grondar.za for PGP key