redhat man page for mcookie

MCOOKIE(1)						     Linux Programmer's Manual							MCOOKIE(1)

NAME
       mcookie - generate magic cookies for xauth

SYNOPSIS
       mcookie [-v] [-f filename ]

DESCRIPTION
       mcookie generates a 128-bit random hexadecimal number for use with the X authority system.  Typical usage:
	      xauth add :0 . `mcookie`

       The  "random"  number  generated is actually the output of the MD5 message digest fed with various piece of random information: the current
       time, the process id, the parent process id, the contents of an input file (if -f is specified), and several bytes of information from  the
       first of the following devices which is present: /dev/random, /dev/urandom, files in /proc, /dev/audio.

BUGS
       The entropy in the generated 128-bit is probably quite small (and, therefore, vulnerable to attack) unless a non-pseudorandom number gener-
       ator is used (e.g., /dev/random under Linux).

       It is assumed that none of the devices opened will block.

FILES
       /dev/random
       /dev/urandom
       /dev/audio
       /proc/stat
       /proc/loadavg

SEE ALSO
       X(1), xauth(1), md5sum(1)

								 25 September 1995							MCOOKIE(1)