random.4: Minor fixes

Signed-off-by: Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
This commit is contained in:
Michael Kerrisk 2015-02-04 09:48:39 +01:00
parent 17ad768d41
commit 792bb5ad59
1 changed files with 8 additions and 8 deletions

View File

@ -37,8 +37,8 @@ The generator also keeps an estimate of the
number of bits of noise in the entropy pool.
From this entropy pool random numbers are created.
.LP
When read, the \fI/dev/random\fP device will only return random bytes
within the estimated number of bits of noise in the entropy
When read, the \fI/dev/random\fP device will return random bytes
only within the estimated number of bits of noise in the entropy
pool.
\fI/dev/random\fP should be suitable for uses that need very
high quality randomness such as one-time pad or key generation.
@ -48,13 +48,13 @@ If
.BR open (2)
is called for
.I /dev/random
with flag
with the flag
.BR O_NONBLOCK ,
a subsequent
.BR read (2)
will not block if the requested number of bytes is not available.
Instead, the available bytes are returned.
If no byte is available
If no byte is available,
.BR read (2)
will return -1 and
.I errno
@ -77,8 +77,8 @@ has no effect when opening
.IR /dev/urandom .
When calling
.BR read (2)
for device
.I /dev/urandom
for the device
.IR /dev/urandom ,
signals will not be handled until after the requested random bytes
have been generated.
.LP
@ -127,8 +127,8 @@ The amount of seed material required to generate a cryptographic key
equals the effective key size of the key.
For example, a 3072-bit RSA
or Diffie-Hellman private key has an effective key size of 128 bits
(it requires about 2^128 operations to break) so a key generator only
needs 128 bits (16 bytes) of seed material from
(it requires about 2^128 operations to break) so a key generator
needs only 128 bits (16 bytes) of seed material from
.IR /dev/random .
While some safety margin above that minimum is reasonable, as a guard