[Dovecot] random pool depletion

Johannes Berg johannes at sipsolutions.net
Fri Dec 31 00:21:37 EET 2004


Timo Sirainen wrote:

> I thought /dev/urandom didn't affect /dev/random? Guess I was wrong. 
> Or is this Linux?

Yes, it is Linux.

>I guess I could add random_weak_fill() function which they use, which
>would basically call just rand().
>  
>
I think that'd be enough for temporary files, wouldn't it?

>Other things that use randomness are non-plaintext authentication
>mechanisms, maybe most importantly APOP, which if enabled reads 16 bytes
>for every POP3 login even if it's not using APOP.
>  
>
That's ok, it only happens once a while, that is what we have the random 
pool for. I just think that depleting it for just a few temporary files 
is a bit overkill (I don't think you really need very good randomness 
for that)

johannes



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