Re: OS snobbery... (was Re: Bad PRNGs revisted in FreSSH)

[Lars Hecking <lhecking () NMRC IE>]

> Someone else stated elsewhere in this thread that NetBSD (one of
> the platforms used for FreSSH development, coincidentally) is an
> example of a current operating system without a /dev/random.  That's
> actually false, and in point of fact, with the quick application of
> a Sun-provided patch you can even have a /dev/random on Solaris.

 You are correct about NetBSD, but not Solaris. The random device
 in SUNWski is part of the web server package in Solaris Server,
 but that package was dropped in Solaris 8 in favour of Apache.
 Also, it is not a "real", character device, it is a pipe. This
 does seem to make a difference for some applications.

 The only "real" random device for Solaris (2.5.1 through 8) is
 Andi Maier's at http://www.cosy.sbg.ac.at/~andi/. While it seems
 to work nicely, I am not aware that people have actually tested
 the quality of this PRNG.