On Thu, Jan 07, 2010 at 06:40:02PM +0100, Roberto Ragusa wrote:
> Hi all,
> if I simply write to /dev/random, will that increase the entropy of my
> system? (I'm assuming that the data I'm writing are random and that
> somehow I got them).
Wikipedia says so.
My tests say no.
How are you testing?
The wikipedia article says:
Non-random data is harmless, because only a privileged user can issue the
ioctl needed to increase the entropy estimate.
SO
--
Matthew Miller <mattdm(a)mattdm.org>
Senior Systems Architect
Cyberinfrastructure Labs / Instructional & Research Computing
Computing & Information Technology
Harvard School of Engineering & Applied Sciences