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authorThomas Schwinge <tschwinge@gnu.org>2007-09-07 22:15:28 +0200
committerThomas Schwinge <tschwinge@gnu.org>2007-09-07 22:15:28 +0200
commit7030f8b48c7a2a3d8f36cb0dd2996059a585232a (patch)
treee38c7d63b9b5a4713cc3ee650cdc2ff09aad3275 /hurd/translator/random.mdwn
parentb48377c0de034f28d00b31e7ab7ba93369201a2b (diff)
Reintegrate another bunch of pages and apply clean-ups.
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+[Savannah task #5130: random translator](http://savannah.gnu.org/task/?5130)
+
+See the attached [[mbox.bz2]] containing all the emails concerning this topic
+which I was able to gather from public archives. (!) This is not up-to-date
+anymore, as [[MichaelCasadevall]] is currently working on this.
+
+# Description
+
+Sources of entropy are for example disk access latencies or keystroke patterns
+or behavior on networks. This suggests that for implementing a random
+translator a kernel part is needed as well, to gather that entropy. That
+kernel part would then export the gathered entropy via a kernel device, named
+perhaps `entropy`.
+
+# Setup Pseudo Random Devices
+
+Stuck getting SSH to work? You need a pseudo random generator (PRG).
+
+There are several solutions to the lack of `/dev/random` and `/dev/urandom`,
+but they are not yet in the default installation.
+
+* Marcus' work can be downloaded at
+ [random.tar.gz](ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/hurd/contrib/marcus/random.tar.gz).
+ (Identical to <http://kilobug.free.fr/hurd/random-64.tar.gz>?)
+ * [A patch](http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/bug-hurd/2002-August/010248.html)
+ that was probably already incorporated from August 14, 2002.
+ * Clemmitt Sigler [reported
+ success](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-hurd/2002-10/msg00076.html)
+ October 11, 2002 and Marcus [described
+ some](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-hurd/2002-10/msg00081.html) of
+ the internals.
+
+* [Entropy Gathering Daemon](http://egd.sourceforge.net/).
+ * [request for packaging](http://bugs.debian.org/145498).
+
+* [OSKit Entropy
+ Patch](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2003-01/msg00000.html) from
+ Derek Davies - Jan 2003.
+ * See also [this page](http://www.ddavies.net/oskit-entropy/).
+ * Note that this patch can (and should) be used with this [OSKit NIC
+ patch](ftp://flux.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/mail/html/oskit-users/msg01570.html).
+
+* [Sune Kirkeby's incomplete port of the Linux /dev/\{,u\}random device
+ driver](http://ibofobi.dk/stuff/hurd-entropy/)
+ * [The files](http://download.ibofobi.dk/hurd-entropy/), including a [patch
+ for GNU
+ Mach](http://download.ibofobi.dk/hurd-entropy/gnumach-entropy.diff.bz2).
+
+---
+
+# Setup Tips
+
+Here are some tips on how to actually setup the two random devices using
+Kilobugs' [random-64 server](http://kilobug.free.fr/hurd/random-64.tar.gz).
+His tarball is a complete Hurd server including a pre-built binary - so you
+don't need GCC or magic fingers for this! :)
+
+After untaring the package you copy the random binary to the `/hurd`
+directory. Then you setup the translators for random and urandom.
+
+ # settrans -c /dev/random /hurd/random \
+ --seed-file /var/run/random-seed --secure
+ # settrans -c /dev/urandom /hurd/random \
+ --seed-file /var/run/urandom-seed --fast
+ # chmod 0644 /dev/random /dev/urandom