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/dev/urandom and RNDFILE question: msg#00004

network.stunnel.user

Subject: /dev/urandom and RNDFILE question

Hello,

I'm a bit confused with the mechanism that stunnel and/or ssl uses to
seed the PRNG. When I ran configure, it says it found a /dev/urandom.
In the man page, it also says that OpenSSL will use /dev/urandom if
available. When I run stunnel though, it seems to be using /.rnd.

I do have a /dev/urandom on my machine, so what is the suggested method
to seed the PRNG? Is there any reason for stunnel to use /.rnd at all,
since /dev/urandom is available?

Do I want to set RNDoverwrite = no? If I do that, do I need to set
RNDfile = /dev/urandom? Should I set RNDbytes=0 (to presumably force
stunnel to have ssl get its random bits from /dev/urandom)?

I'd really appreciate it if someone could clarify this portion of the
setup.

FYI: using stunnel-4.04, openssl-0.9.7c.

Also, everything is working fine, I'm just confused on why stunnel is
using /.rnd when /dev/urandom is available.

Thanks.

-Tom



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