.\" Copyright (c) 1997 John S. Kallal (kallal@voicenet.com)
.\"
.\" This is free documentation; you can redistribute it and/or
.\" modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
.\" published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
.\" the License, or (at your option) any later version.
.\"
.\" Some changes by tytso and aeb.
.\"
.\" 2004-12-16, John V. Belmonte/mtk, Updated init and quit scripts
.\" 2004-04-08, AEB, Improved description of read from /dev/urandom
.\"
.TH RANDOM 4 2003-10-25 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
random, urandom \- kernel random number source devices
.SH DESCRIPTION
The character special files \fB/dev/random\fP and 
\fB/dev/urandom\fP (present since Linux 1.3.30)
provide an interface to the kernel's random number generator.  
File \fB/dev/random\fP has major device number 1 
and minor device number 8.  File \fB/dev/urandom\fP 
has major device number 1 and minor device number 9. 
.LP
The random number generator gathers environmental noise 
from device drivers and other sources into an entropy pool.  
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 \fB/dev/random\fP device will only return random bytes 
within the estimated number of bits of noise in the entropy 
pool.  \fB/dev/random\fP should be suitable for uses that need very 
high quality randomness such as one-time pad or key generation.  
When the entropy pool is empty, reads from \fB/dev/random\fP will block 
until additional environmental noise is gathered.
.LP 
A read from the \fB/dev/urandom\fP device will not block
waiting for more entropy.
As a result, if there is not sufficient entropy in the
entropy pool, the returned values are theoretically vulnerable to a
cryptographic attack on the algorithms used by the driver.  Knowledge of
how to do this is not available in the current non-classified
literature, but it is theoretically possible that such an attack may
exist.  If this is a concern in your application, use \fB/dev/random\fP
instead.
.SH CONFIGURING
If your system does not have
\fB/dev/random\fP and \fB/dev/urandom\fP created already, they 
can be created with the following commands:

.nf
        mknod \-m 644 /dev/random c 1 8
        mknod \-m 644 /dev/urandom c 1 9
        chown root:root /dev/random /dev/urandom
.fi
 
When a Linux system starts up without much operator interaction, 
the entropy pool may be in a fairly predictable state.
This reduces the actual amount of noise in the entropy pool 
below the estimate.  In order to counteract this effect, it helps to carry 
entropy pool information across shut-downs and start-ups.  
To do this, add the following lines to an appropriate script 
which is run during the Linux system start-up sequence: 

.nf
	echo "Initializing random number generator..."
	random_seed=/var/run/random-seed
	# Carry a random seed from start-up to start-up
	# Load and then save the whole entropy pool
	if [ \-f $random_seed ]; then
	    cat $random_seed >/dev/urandom
	else
	    touch $random_seed
	fi
	chmod 600 $random_seed
	poolfile=/proc/sys/kernel/random/poolsize
	[ \-r $poolfile ] && bytes=`cat $poolfile` || bytes=512
	dd if=/dev/urandom of=$random_seed count=1 bs=$bytes
.fi

Also, add the following lines in an appropriate script which is 
run during the Linux system shutdown:
 
.nf
	# Carry a random seed from shut-down to start-up
	# Save the whole entropy pool
	echo "Saving random seed..."
	random_seed=/var/run/random-seed
	touch $random_seed
	chmod 600 $random_seed
	poolfile=/proc/sys/kernel/random/poolsize
	[ \-r $poolfile ] && bytes=`cat $poolfile` || bytes=512
	dd if=/dev/urandom of=$random_seed count=1 bs=$bytes
.fi
.SH "PROC INTERFACE"
The files in the directory
.I /proc/sys/kernel/random
(present since 2.3.16) provide an additional interface to the
.B /dev/random
device.
.LP
The read-only file
.I entropy_avail
gives the available entropy. Normally, this will be 4096 (bits),
a full entropy pool.
.LP
The file
.I poolsize
gives the size of the entropy pool. Normally, this will be 512 (bytes).
It can be changed to any value for which an algorithm is available.
Currently the choices are 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048.
.LP
The file
.I read_wakeup_threshold
contains the number of bits of entropy required for waking up processes
that sleep waiting for entropy from
.BR /dev/random .
The default is 64.
The file
.I write_wakeup_threshold
contains the number of bits of entropy below which we wake up
processes that do a
.I select()
or
.I poll()
for write access to
.BR /dev/random .
These values can be changed by writing to the files.
.LP
The read-only files
.I uuid
and
.I boot_id
contain random strings like 6fd5a44b-35f4-4ad4-a9b9-6b9be13e1fe9.
The former is generated afresh for each read, the latter was
generated once.
.SH FILES
/dev/random
.br
/dev/urandom
.SH AUTHOR
The kernel's random number generator was written by 
Theodore Ts'o (tytso@athena.mit.edu).
.SH "SEE ALSO"
mknod (1)
.br
RFC\ 1750, "Randomness Recommendations for Security"