NODE 2202b2b9RNG_DEVICE Environment Variable?
rngaugp@alpha.c2.orgSun, 7 Apr 1996 13:51:08 +0800
>Considering a couple of RNG hardware manufacturers use different
>names for device interfaces, perhaps it would be 'convenient' to
>have apps look for the environment variable RNG_DEVICE which gives
>the name of whatever device is used (rnadom$, random, rand, even
>lpt2...) or even a special file that is mixed periodically by a cron
>job (noiz.c?).
>The assumption is that reads from that device would return "truly
>random" bytes (not from a pseudo-RNG), either from specialized
>hardware or a system-noise sampler such as noise.sys (DOS) or
>random.c (Linux, FreeBSD).
>How software would handle not getting enough bytes is another matter, >
>perhaps left configurable to the app.
>
>Rob.
My hack to PGP to support RNG uses the varriable RNGDRIVER,
but is in config.txt, not the environment.