Anyone know of a random data generator?

Dan Coutu coutu at snowy-owl.com
Thu Jul 29 14:50:01 EDT 2004


For some tests I'm running it would be really useful to have a random 
(or even semi-random)
data source that can be used for making really big files of arbitrary 
size. It turns out to be
trickier than I had expected. So for example I thought I'd be able to 
write data to a tape
all the way to the end like this:

cat /dev/random | tar cf /dev/st1 -

Which I expected to use the endless stream of random data generated by 
/dev/random as
input to the tar command which would write to tape until it errored out 
at the end of the tape.

The reality is that it did nothing at all. Not one single byte of data.

So, any other bright ideas?

Dan



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