From af5723c71e3efbfe60266162ebb5d07b45d72725 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Pádraig Brady Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 08:42:15 +0100 Subject: shred,sort,shuf: don't use /dev/urandom by default Suggestion from Steven Schveighoffer at: http://savannah.gnu.org/patch/?6797 to greatly speed up the random passes done by shred. * gl/lib/randread.c: Default to using the internal pseudorandom generator, rather than reading /dev/urandom * src/shred.c (usage): remove mention of /dev/urandom * src/shuf.c (usage); ditto * src/sort.c (usage): ditto * doc/coreutils.text: Document the new behaviour for aquiring random data. --- NEWS | 7 +++++++ 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+) (limited to 'NEWS') diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS index 7c507efa2..de1db4437 100644 --- a/NEWS +++ b/NEWS @@ -7,6 +7,13 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month names from the locale database that have differing widths. +** Changes in behavior + + shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default. + This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by + default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom + was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems. + * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable] ** New features -- cgit v1.2.3-70-g09d2