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#1 2010-01-11 05:22:37

zippy
Member
Registered: 2009-02-01
Posts: 54

[SOLVED] extremely slow /dev/urandom from live cd

Im getting a pc ready for arch. Im running dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=1M to fill the drive with random data for and encrypted setup.

I'm 4 hours into a 80gb drive with no end in sight. Its a newer pc, 2.8 dual cores and sata whatnots.

Is there entropy issues using the live cd? Ive read that cat could be faster but i dont know where the bottleneck is. Has anyone else had this experience?

EDIT:nvm, i installed and used dcfldd from the live cd for a progress report and its running alot faster. Maybe its a bug in dd on the live cd.

Last edited by zippy (2010-01-11 05:53:31)

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#2 2010-01-11 09:19:40

Cdh
Member
Registered: 2009-02-03
Posts: 1,098

Re: [SOLVED] extremely slow /dev/urandom from live cd

/dev/random is really slow because it only provides "true" randomness which is not really easy to gather on a PC.

For things like dd'ing a whole disk you should use /dev/urandom. That's not really "true" random but it's way faster and should be random enaugh.


฿ 18PRsqbZCrwPUrVnJe1BZvza7bwSDbpxZz

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#3 2010-01-11 17:33:00

zippy
Member
Registered: 2009-02-01
Posts: 54

Re: [SOLVED] extremely slow /dev/urandom from live cd

I am using urandom as i said above and the title states.

Anyways, dcfldd is averaging 8mb per second. Im doing a 200gb now and its gonna take around 10 hours. I guess if i just let dd finish on my first post it would have been done soon, i just didnt have a progress report to gauge the speed. Apparently this is just how long it takes, i was just disappointed with the results.

Last edited by zippy (2010-01-11 17:42:25)

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