Good old entropy...Have not used that term since taking thermal dynamics and
physical chemistry.  That must be why I am not a practicing Chemical
Engineer anymore.  ;-)

Gilbert

"Randy Kaelber" wrote:
> Let me guess:  You used /dev/random and it just "froze up", yes?
> /dev/random is a source of high entropy bits in Linux (and in *BSD... as
> I recall, Linux borrowed the idea from there) and that entropy is
> collected over time.  If all the entropy is used, further reads to
> /dev/random will block until there's sufficient entropy to satisfy the
> request.