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GETRANDOM(2) System Calls Manual GETRANDOM(2)

NAME

getrandomget random data

LIBRARY

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/random.h>

ssize_t
getrandom(void *buf, size_t buflen, unsigned int flags);

DESCRIPTION

() fills buf with up to buflen bytes of random data.

The flags argument may include zero or more of the following:

GRND_NONBLOCK
Return EAGAIN instead of blocking, if the random(4) device has not yet been seeded. By default, () will block until the device is seeded.
GRND_RANDOM
This flag does nothing on FreeBSD. /dev/random and /dev/urandom are identical.

If the random(4) device has been seeded, reads of up to 256 bytes will always return as many bytes as requested and will not be interrupted by signals.

RETURN VALUES

Upon successful completion, the number of bytes which were actually read is returned. For requests larger than 256 bytes, this can be fewer bytes than were requested. Otherwise, -1 is returned and the global variable errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS

The getrandom() operation returns the following errors:

[]
The ‘GRND_NONBLOCK’ flag was set and the random(4) device was not yet seeded.
[]
The buf parameter points to an invalid address.
[]
The sleep was interrupted by a signal.
[]
An invalid flags was specified.
[]
The requested buflen was larger than IOSIZE_MAX.

SEE ALSO

arc4random(3), getentropy(3), random(4)

STANDARDS

getentropy() is non-standard. It is present in Linux.

HISTORY

The getrandom() system call first appeared in FreeBSD 12.0.

February 24, 2018 Debian