monitoring entropy

Raul Miller (rdm@test.legislate.com)
Mon, 13 Oct 1997 18:20:50 -0401

I recently ran into a situation where I'd like to monitor how
much entropy is available in /dev/random. As I understand it,
this shouldn't be a problem -- essentially, it's just telling
me when a read will block. [I'm thinking of leaving a little
thermometer up in a window and futzing with keyboard or mouse
when it gets low].

If there's some risk to this, could someone in the know (e.g.
Ted) tell me?

For my purposes, a /proc/entropy file that did something like
sprintf(buffer, "%d\n", random_state.entropy_count);
would be perfect.

Comments? Jeers?

Thanks,

-- 
Raul