[ale] what's the difference between

[ale at sixit.com (Robert Reese~)]

> /dev/random and /dev/urandom?
>
> /dev/random is very slow and on a newly installed machine `cat
> /dev/random` does little. Same machine `cat /dev/urandom` fills the
> screen quickly.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urandom urandom is a less-secure 
version of random.


> Is there a way to "add entropy" to get /dev/random to fill quicker?

Check out http://egd.sourceforge.net/ as an alternative.

Cheers,
R~