In article <199510311715.TAA05821@grumble.grondar.za>, Mark Murray <mark@grondar.za> wrote:

...

forever { cat /dev/random > /dev/null }

Severely limiting most decent folk's chance at getting PGP to work.

Ideally, if two processes are trying to read /dev/random at the same time, both would get data at half-speed. Doesn't it work that way already?

Ideally, yes. However most processes won't swamp (and deplete) /dev/random like this will. Most (well-behaved) processes will (should) just take what they need. The above loop tries quite hard to take all that is there, so any process asking for randomness will be sharing with the above loop on an almost byte-by-byte basis, like you suggest. The above won't leave a "pool of randomness" to act as a buffer for user requests, so will cause a nasty slowdown. 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