the "evil" of EGD (was Re: RFE: Portable OpenSSH)

[Sandor W. Sklar]

ah, ok, thanks.  that is a good nutshell summary.

-s-

At 9:28 AM -0600 3/28/01, <mouring at etoh.eviladmin.org> wrote:
>On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Sandor W. Sklar wrote:
>
>>  Folks,
>>
>>  I hope this doesn't sound stupid, but I don't understand why everyone
>>  is so down on EGD.  I've been using it (on AIX) since we put in
>>  OpenSSH, and I haven't had any problems with it.
>>
>>  Am I just not smart enough to understand why it is so bad?  (Of
>>  course, I understand the much preferable inclusion of a real source
>>  of entropy by the vendor, but why is egd so bad compared to the other
>>  add on entropy sources?)
>>
>
>The main complaint has been because EGD is a perl program, and you now
>have to drag the whole perl interpeter into memory for long periods in
>time,  and most folks don't care for that idea.
>
>I can safely say the preformance (can't judge quality) between PRNGd and
>EGD is the difference between day and night.  PRNGd is much faster, forks
>less, and as a result uses less resources to match/exceed EGD.
>
>That's pretty much it in a nutshell.
>
>- Ben

-- 
   sandor w sklar
   unix systems administrator
   stanford university itss-css