[Freedombox-discuss] Entropy from the soundcard

[Michael Rogers]

On 16/09/11 02:06, Sandy Harris wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 8:13 PM, Michael Rogers <m-- at gmx.com> wrote:
> 
> >>   http://www.digital-scurf.org/software/randomsound
> >
> > Thanks, I've had a quick look at the source and it looks promising.
> > Unlike Turbid it doesn't try to produce high-quality randomness on its
> > own, it just contributes bits to the kernel's entropy pool.
> 
> Turbid can do that too, of course.

True, I should have mentioned that. :-)

> What can do damage is increasing the /dev/random entropy
> estimate by more than the number of bits you added. That
> cannot be done by writing. Increasing the estimate is done
> with a root--only ioctl call.

Excellent - in that case it seems like running randomsound and/or Turbid
as a non-root user would achieve what I wanted. Thanks!

Cheers,
Michael