/dev/urandom|random and Solaris

Ed Phillips
2002-06-25T16:52:30Z

On Tue, 25 Jun 2002, Luc I. Suryo wrote:

> Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 11:16:41 -0500
> From: Luc I. Suryo <luc at suryo.com>
> To: openssh-unix-dev at mindrot.org
> Subject: /dev/urandom|random and Solaris
>
>
> Hello,
>
> Being new to the list i hope this question has not been asked before....
> As you might know Solaris 9 supportes /dev/random and /dev/urandom bij
> default and earlier version need to install a patch to have these
> devices....
>
> But the configuration script under Solaris (Sparc/X86) does not test the
> existing of the devices... is this to be known as a error/bug? and is
> there a patch?

It doesn't need to... the OpenSSL code uses /dev/urandom if it exists.
If you want to change to /dev/random, you have to edit the code (look for
DEVRANDOM in the source).

With OpenSSH, you should use the configuration options to disable the
OpenSSH-supplied entropy gathering stuff (--with-rand-helper=no?).

	Ed

Ed Phillips <ed at udel.edu> University of Delaware (302) 831-6082
Systems Programmer III, Network and Systems Services
finger -l ed at polycut.nss.udel.edu for PGP public key