testing quality of a /dev/random

[Werner Koch]

On Thu, 9 Mar 2000, Enzo Michelangeli wrote:

> Such kind of tests, at best, prove how bad a (P)RNG is, not how good: the
> (very deterministic) digits of PI would pass your tests with flying colours.
> Determining an lower bound for the entropy of a data source based only on
> the data stream is a non-computable problem.

And remember that the output from /dev/random transfers the SHA-1
mixinf function.  There is no way to measure the entropy outside the
kernel.

   Werner