On Wednesday, August 1, 2018 6:10:56 PM CEST you wrote: > Looking at: [1](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Rng-tools), and then > following to: [2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ > Hardware_random_number_generator), one can think that rng-tools uses: [3] > (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RdRand). > > But it might not be so, since [2] says: "The RdRand opcode will return > values from an onboard hardware random number generator. It is present in > Intel Ivy Bridge processors and AMD64 processors since 2015", and IvyBridge > started in 2012, and rng-tools code is very, very old (but there is some > overlapping time, possibly). > > Therefore believing that rng-tools uses RdRand's CPU hardware random > generator instruction, might be pure misconception. > > Consequently, haveged seeming much newer and maintained, it is in my opinion > the best choice.
It seems the overlapping time was sufficient to "Add RDRAND support" to rng-tools: (debian's rng-tools5) [4](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/kernel/rng-tools/rng-tools.git/log/?qt=grep&q=rdrand) "Add RDRAND support" (2012-07-31) [5](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/kernel/rng-tools/rng-tools.git/commit/?id=2a01453686f065ac95916fe49a02407914e05dd4) Next, is the redhat version: [6](https://github.com/nhorman/rng-tools/search?q=rdrand&unscoped_q=rdrand) debian's "rng-tools" (unofficial), seems to be to old, viz. anterior to 2012's IvyBridge, to use RdRand instruction: [7](https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/rng-tools) (last news, as of today, is from 2011-11-10) > > Thanks
