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Manpage of IPSEC_RANBITS
IPSEC_RANBITS
Section: Maintenance Commands (8)
Updated: 22 Aug 2000
Index
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NAME
ipsec ranbits - generate random bits in ASCII form
SYNOPSIS
ipsec
ranbits
[
--quick
] [
--continuous
] [
--bytes
] nbits
DESCRIPTION
Ranbits
obtains
nbits
(rounded up to the nearest byte)
high-quality random bits from
random(4),
and emits them on standard output as an ASCII string.
The default output format is
datatot(3)
h
format:
lowercase hexadecimal with a
0x
prefix and an underscore every 32 bits.
The
--quick
option produces quick-and-dirty random bits:
instead of using the high-quality random bits from
/dev/random,
which may take some time to supply the necessary bits if
nbits
is large,
ranbits
uses
/dev/urandom,
which yields prompt results but lower-quality randomness.
The
--continuous
option uses
datatot(3)
x
output format, like
h
but without the underscores.
The
--bytes
option causes
nbits
to be interpreted as a byte count rather than a bit count.
FILES
/dev/random, /dev/urandom
SEE ALSO
ipsec_datatot(3), random(4)
HISTORY
Written for the Linux FreeS/WAN project
<http://www.freeswan.org>
by Henry Spencer.
BUGS
There is an internal limit on
nbits,
currently 20000.
Without
--quick,
ranbits's
run time is difficult to predict.
A request for a large number of bits,
at a time when the system's entropy pool is low on randomness,
may take quite a while to satisfy.
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- FILES
-
- SEE ALSO
-
- HISTORY
-
- BUGS
-
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Time: 21:40:18 GMT, November 11, 2003