Hi Thiago,
On Fri, Nov 07, 2025 at 11:55:35AM -0800, Thiago Macieira wrote:
I'm not asking about the performance of generating new random numbers in this process.
I am asking about the system-wide impact that draining the entropy source would have. Is that a bad thing?
I suspect the answer is "no" because it's the same as /dev/urandom anyway.
Oh. "Entropy source draining" is not a real thing. There used to be bizarre behavior related to /dev/random (not urandom), but this has been gone for ages. And even the non-getrandom Linux fallback code uses /dev/urandom before /dev/random. So not even on old kernels is this an issue. You can keep generating random numbers forever without worrying about running out of juice or irritating other processes.
Jason