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I want to produce random string by command

 xxd -l 32 -c 32 -p < /dev/random
 dd1ad9f2deae0af5412e82fbbeb2df6b239e91d49d98638cc5b4bb94aac25463

How to set environment variable? Both way below don't wotking

export TMP_RPC_PASS=$(echo xxd -l 32 -c 32 -p < /dev/random)
export TMP_RPC_PASS=$(xxd -l 32 -c 32 -p < /dev/random)

bash simple freeze after second variant and waiting something, only ctrl-c allow to return command prompt.

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8
  • 3
    The second one looks OK to me - in what way exactly does it not work?
    – steeldriver
    Jan 22 at 21:41
  • 2
    Second version works for me. Perhaps your test was blocking because entropy was exhausted. Try /dev/urandom for comparison.
    – Tilman
    Jan 22 at 22:14
  • 1
    Entropy is collected continuously, you just have to wait. If you don't want to wait use /dev/urandom which for most purposes ist just as good.
    – Tilman
    Jan 22 at 22:32
  • 1
    Thank you, @Tilman. Post anser please, and I will mark it as solution.
    – Alex
    Jan 22 at 22:34
  • 1
    no need to redirect <, xxd takes infile as an argument.
    – bac0n
    Jan 23 at 7:37

1 Answer 1

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6

The second version works fine. The reason it appears to freeze is that /dev/random blocks when the system's entropy pool is exhausted, waiting for new entropy to be collected.

To avoid blocking, use /dev/urandom instead of /dev/random. For most purposes this is just as good.

export TMP_RPC_PASS=$(xxd -l 32 -c 32 -p /dev/urandom)
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