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The entropy needed to generate random numbers is a finite resource. If you don't have enough entropy stored up, /dev/random may block until such a time as it has sufficient entropy.

/dev/urandom reuses existing entropy to produce more pseudo-random numbers. It may be less "random", but will never block.

more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//dev/random



And that should be a very good reason for using random instead of urandom

I don't want less entropy thank you. If I don't have enough then let's wait until some more become available

I would use urandom if I need random but I don't care about their quality (even though urandom is good most of the time)




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