OS X (Apple)

This is abridged lsof output from my safari process:

Safari 13063 owner 9u unix 0x982ef3b9c1be1293 0t0 ->0x982ef3b9b7534eab
Safari 13063 owner 10u unix 0x982ef3b9c1be0933 0t0 ->0x982ef3b9c1be1423
Safari 13063 owner 11u unix 0x982ef3b9c1be1423 0t0 ->0x982ef3b9c1be0933

besides the process, process id and owner, I have no idea what these things are. Could someone explain?

Also, what is /dev/random?

Probably shared-memory segments or temporary files. It is hard to tell without the output surrounding it.

A device which produces a (pseudo-)random sequence of numbers, one every time you query it. For some things in UNIX one needs a random generator (for instance: the retransmission time offset if an Ethernet packet collides with another).

Random bits of "noise" is collected systemwide (i.e. from device drivers) in an "entropy pool". From this pool very high-quality random numbers are generated, but "/dev/random" will stop once the entropy pool is depleted until it is refilled. In most systems there is also a "/dev/urandom", which is will not block in this case, but produce "less random" (the numbers are more predictable).

I hope this helps.

bakunin