Re: Use /dev/random before encrypting disks?

[Bruno Wolff III <bruno wolff to>]

On Tue, Feb 05, 2008 at 10:23:47 +0100,
  Alexander Todorov <atodorov redhat com> wrote:
> Hello all,
> in many disk encryption resources on the web the user is given an advice 
> to use /dev/random to populate the disk before he sets up the encryption 
>  process. This is said to increase entropy and recommended for brand 
> new disks.

You'd probably need to use /dev/urandom unless you wanted to wait a very
long time.
Another option would be to use AES in counter mode.