Programming

Hi. You may know how to detect when a interruption succeeded programming in C. Just like receiving a signal without blocking. Knowing when it was a keystroke (IRQ 2), or a mouse movement (12), or a disk access, etc. and getting actually for example the letter typed.

Thanks a lot.

With what operating system, environment, hardware etc?

If you are talking about DOS, just stick in a simple TSR with redirector, if you are talking about a more complex OS it's a driver responsibility.

Out of interest, why, as a program, would you care whether a disk access has occurred?

Working on Linux. But it shouldn't matter. There is not a standard C routine to know when a interruption succeeded? A way to handle signals/events generated from interruptions, for example.

I want to know this to implement a random bit generator. You have to check different sources like the time delaying between keystrokes or maybe the change of the temperature.

No. The standard C library works at a much higher level. Signal only refers to your process.

You could open an HTTP connection to a weather site.....?

I am just asking for an API, like in Unix the system calls are wrapped in C functions. If there isn't something like this, do you know a library to solve it?

If I was on Solaris 9 and above I would just use "/dev/random" and be done.

rand(3): pseudo-random number generator - Linux man page

I know the existence of /dev/random. I just wanna play with the sources by myself, mixing them, etc. But I just don't how to get that information. I have seen some OpenGL libraries but seems too complicate for something I think should be a basic routine of an OS.