Hurd/RandomDevice.mdwn


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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.
  * Clemet [reported success](http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/help-hurd/2002-October/006690.html) October 11, 2002 and Marcus [described some](http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/help-hurd/2002-October/006695.html) of the internals.

* [egd](http://egd.sourceforge.net/) - Entropy Gathering Daemon (here's the [RFP](http://bugs.debian.org/145498))

* [OSKit Entropy Patch](http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/bug-hurd/2003-January/011155.html) from Derek Davies - Jan 2003.
  * Note that this patch can (and should) be used with [this patch](ftp://flux.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/mail/html/oskit-users/msg01570.html).

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## <a name="Setup_tips"> Setup tips </a>

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

-- [[Main/JoachimNilsson]] - 21 Jan 2003