Re: [Silliness] Re: Wanted: Secure-delete utility for Linux

Gregory Maxwell (linker@z.ml.org)
Wed, 23 Dec 1998 12:58:53 -0500 (EST)


On Wed, 23 Dec 1998, Greg Mildenhall wrote:

> On Wed, 23 Dec 1998, Steve Smith wrote:
> > Therefore, I propose a new device: /dev/monkeys. This
> > infinite-monkeys simulator will supply all possible combinations of
> > strings, and selecting the required one is left to user space
> > programs. Elegant, no?
> Very elegant indeed, but what about the seek times?
> On the positive side, now we can
> grep 'UTS_RELEASE "2.2.0"' /dev/monkeys
> and stop worrying about all this development rubbish.
> Then the whole list could be devoted to useless character devices, futile
> patent ideology, and flaming RMS because he dared to defend himself.

Actually, /dev/monkeys has already been implimented. To comply with Unix
tradition Linux has, of course, named this device a bit opaquely. The
actually device is named /dev/random. Unfortunatly, there are some
performances problems with it.

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