OS X and GPG
David McCabe
I would like to know if it is safe to use GPG with Mac OS X. The GPG web
page states:
GnuPG works fine on GNU/Linux with x86, alpha, mips, sparc64, m68k or
powerpc CPUs. (x86 is the primary development system, the other CPUs are
only checked from time to time)
It compiles okay on GNU/Hurd but because Mach has no random device, it
should not be used for real work. It should be easy to add the random
device driver from Linux to the Hurd - Anyone?
Therefore, if Darwin --being also based on Mach-- shares the lack of
enthropy with Hurd, it would not be wise to use GPG with it. However, if
Darwin adds a random number system apart from Mach, it would be safe. Does
anyone have any information of this subject?
Thanks!
--
David McCabe
david...@mac.com
http://homepage.mac.com/davidmccabe/
B. Douglas Hilton
/dev/random or /dev/urandom. If they exist then you are
fine. If not, then as a bad hack you could always do this:
ln -s /dev/mouse /dev/random
Then roll the mouse around and click the buttons when
you encrypt your message :-) ( Just kidding )
Sorry thats all I know. I have 2 macs, an IIcx which is
dead, and a IIsi which won't boot. Neither can handle
OSX so I don't know. I got them to try and install
Linux on them but it hasn't worked out so well.
I have GPG working for my Linux, and I know it
needs /dev/random. As long as that device exists
then you should be able to compile and run with
no problems.
Mach won't ever provide such a high level device,
that has to be implemented in user-land under Mach.
- Doug
Henri Sivonen
<doug....@engineer.com> wrote:
> I would be suprised if you didn't have random. Look for
> /dev/random or /dev/urandom.
Neither of those exist on Darwin.
--
Henri Sivonen
hen...@clinet.fi
http://www.clinet.fi/~henris/
jason andrade
>Sorry thats all I know. I have 2 macs, an IIcx which is
>dead, and a IIsi which won't boot. Neither can handle
>OSX so I don't know. I got them to try and install
>Linux on them but it hasn't worked out so well.
you could either try NetBSD, which tends to have good
support for old hardware, or debian-linux-68k.
the IIcx and IIsi are really getting on, so unless you
have a reasonable amount of ram in each (i think the
max supported is 32M and 24M respectively ? and i'm not
even sure if you have `clean' rom issues there..) you might
be much better off putting a System 7.0 or 7.1 on them
and donating them to a young relative :-)
cheers,
-jason
John Cleary
john
Thomas Bushnell, BSG
> What the f&$* is GPG?
The GNU Privacy Guard, which is a free version of PGP.
B. Douglas Hilton
style translator would work, although I am not sure how to code
it. My Hurd skills are little beyond neophyte level.
I believe that GPG only needs random while it generates keys; using
the encryption algorithms don't depend on it. So if you could download
a good pseudorandom generator code and patch gpg to use a library
function you might be able to get around it.
Or make your key on a linux box and copy it over to OSX? Not
sure if this would work but its a theory.
- Doug
Joseph Mallett
discussion, and guess what, nothing else than HURD uses translators.
BTW, using another source of entropy should be very easy. Reading from
a character device is equally easy as reading from a named pipe or
something else, and if GPG can't use a PRNG daemon that gathers data
to provide suitable random entropy, that runs as a user problem, then
that is a fault (and quite a bad one) with GPG. But I doubt this is
so. I don't think that people are that dumb.
On Sat, 25 Aug 2001 13:00:07 -0400, "B. Douglas Hilton"
<doug....@engineer.com> wrote:
>I guess then it will need to be implemented in user space. A Hurd
>style translator would work, although I am not sure how to code
>it. My Hurd skills are little beyond neophyte level.
> I believe that GPG only needs random while it generates keys; using
>the encryption algorithms don't depend on it. So if you could download
>a good pseudorandom generator code and patch gpg to use a library
>function you might be able to get around it.
> Or make your key on a linux box and copy it over to OSX? Not
>sure if this would work but its a theory.
>
>- Doug
>
>
>
>Henri Sivonen wrote:
>
>>In article <3B85BF6...@engineer.com>, "B. Douglas Hilton"
>><doug....@engineer.com> wrote:
>>
>>>I would be suprised if you didn't have random. Look for
>>>/dev/random or /dev/urandom.
>>>
>>
>>Neither of those exist on Darwin.
>>
>
>
--
Joseph Mallett <alt.fan.jmallett>
xMach Core Team <alt.os.xmach>
David McCabe
lot about random stuff and how it works. By the way, a 'ps -aux | grep
prng' listed none (save grep it's self).
David McCabe
Joseph Mallett wrote :