Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> 
> David Brownlee writes:
> >       The openbsd people have done some interesting things with putting
> >       random number generators into the kernel - using the
> >       unpredicability of kernbel events to provide a 'pool' of
> >       randomness.
> 
> Actually, that work comes from Ted Tso's work for Linux. We've been
> examining it for a while and something will likely go in well before
> 1.3.

... and if the "serious problems" Jason has mentioned in the OBSD
implementation are also in the FreeBSD implementation, I suspect
that Mark Murray would appreciate a brief heads-up on that.

It should be stressed though that the 'kernel entropy pool' 
concept has some significant shortcomings, most significantly
that there is only so much entropy to be had; it is quite feasible
to exhaust the available entropy simply by consuming it faster 
than it is generated.

This presents some interesting problems 8)

> Perry

--
Mike Smith  *BSD hack  Unix hardware collector
The question "why are the fundamental laws of nature mathematical"
invites the trivial response "because we define as fundamental those
laws which are mathematical".  Paul Davies, _The_Mind_of_God_