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

[Arnold]

My Debian system looks normal (only Debian stable/wheezy packages).

lsof /dev/random
COMMAND  PID       USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
sks     2638 debian-sks    3r   CHR    1,8      0t0 1209 /dev/random
sks     2639 debian-sks    3r   CHR    1,8      0t0 1209 /dev/random

uname -a
Linux pgpkeys 3.2.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.2.46-1 x86_64 GNU/Linux

dpkg-query -l sks
...
    Name            Version        Architecture Description
+++-===============-==============-============-================================
ii  sks             1.1.3-2        amd64        Synchronizing OpenPGP Key Server


Arnold

On 09/19/2013 07:31 PM, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
> 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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