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[Sks-devel] why does SKS have /dev/random open for writing?


From: Daniel Kahn Gillmor
Subject: [Sks-devel] why does SKS have /dev/random open for writing?
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 13:31:53 -0400
User-agent: Notmuch/0.16 (http://notmuchmail.org) Emacs/23.4.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)

hi SKS folks--

I was just looking at the behavior of sks 1.1.4, and i noticed that it
seems to have /dev/random open for writing:

0 zimmermann:~# lsof /dev/random 
COMMAND PID       USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
sks     742 debian-sks    3w   CHR    1,8      0t0 1244 /dev/random
sks     756 debian-sks    3w   CHR    1,8      0t0 1244 /dev/random
0 zimmermann:~# 

this is not read/write (which would be marked as 3u instead of 3w), but
write-only (presumably appending) to the character device.

I'm not clear on why this is happening.  I don't see /dev/random
referenced explicitly in the source.  Anyone have any clue about what
it's doing?  This is happening for me on debian systems -- can users of
other systems confirm or deny that this is happening for them as well?

Maybe it's an artifact of one of the ocaml libraries sks depends on?
I'm not sure how i'd debug that to verify it.

      --dkg

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