According to random(4) manual, /dev/random is essentially deprecated on
Linux for quite some time:
"The /dev/random interface is considered a legacy interface, and
/dev/urandom is preferred and sufficient in all use cases, with the
exception of applications which require randomness during early boot
time; for these applications, getrandom(2) must be used instead, because
it will block until the entropy pool is initialized."
An attempt to use it would cause unnecessary blocking on machines
without a good hwrng even when it shouldn't be needed. Since Linux 3.17,
a getrandom(2) call is available that will block only until the
randomness pool has been seeded.
It is probably not a good default yet as it requires a fairly recent
kernel and glibc (3.17 and 2.25 respectively).
Signed-off-by: Lubomir Rintel <lkundrak@v3.sk>
master
Lubomir Rintel7 years agocommitted byJouni Malinen