Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 08:33:34 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
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To: Nate Eldredge <neldredge AT hmc DOT edu>
cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: LD errors compiling source from gnupg-1.0.1.tar.gz
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On 27 Feb 2000, Nate Eldredge wrote:

> Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il> writes:
> 
> > Richard Dawe wrote:
> > > 
> > > DJGPP does not have /dev/random, nor does it have /dev/urandom.
> > 
> > This could be easily emulated with File System Extensions, no?
> 
> Maybe.  /dev/random is a strong random number generator.  On Linux, it
> works by gathering various random events from the hardware (keyboard
> interrupt timing, mouse movement, noise from a microphone, etc) and
> hashing them.  But it's a somewhat difficult proposition to
> continually gather all this info unless you are the kernel.

I think there's lots of random events you could gather on a PC by 
accessing various ports and absolute memory addresses.  No steenking 
Linux can compete with the kind of unlimited access to system
hardware that a typical DOS/Windows machines have ;-).