From: Sean O'Riordain (seanpor at domain acm.org)
Date: Sun 25 Feb 2001 - 21:06:07 GMT
John O Sullivan wrote:
>
> export RANDOM=(any number between 0-32767)
> #This initialises RANDOM
> echo $RANDOM
> #Spits out a random number (between 0-32767)
>
> afaik there is no way to generate a completely random number with a
> computer apart from bombarding it with xrays and reading a section of
> memory
>
> johno
>
> On Sun, 25 Feb 2001 20:28:52 Ruairi Newman wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Can anyone tell me what the quickest cleanest way to generate a
> > completely random number in a bash shell script is?
> >
> > Rgds,
> >
> > Ruairi
under more recent kernels >2.2? there is an entropy pool which is taken
from things like disk activity etc... which is designed to be pretty
random... openssl will have routines to use it... no idea how to use it
in a shell script though...
Sean
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