The idea behind this program is to simply access the ram and download the data from it to a txt file.
Later Ill convert the txt file to jpeg and hopefully it will be readable .
However when I try and read from the RAM using NEW[] it takes waaaaaay to long to actually copy all the values into the file?
Isnt it suppose to be really fast? I mean I save pictures everyday and it doesn't even take a second?
Is there some other method I can use to dump memory to a file?
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <hw/pci.h>
#include <hw/inout.h>
#include <sys/mman.h>
main()
{
FILE *fp;
fp = fopen ("test.txt","w+d");
int NumberOfPciCards = 3;
struct pci_dev_info info[NumberOfPciCards];
void *PciDeviceHandler1,*PciDeviceHandler2,*PciDeviceHandler3;
uint32_t *Buffer;
int *BusNumb; //int Buffer;
uint32_t counter =0;
int i;
int r;
int y;
volatile uint32_t *NEW,*NEW2;
uintptr_t iobase;
volatile uint32_t *regbase;
NEW = (uint32_t *)malloc(sizeof(uint32_t));
NEW2 = (uint32_t *)malloc(sizeof(uint32_t));
Buffer = (uint32_t *)malloc(sizeof(uint32_t));
BusNumb = (int*)malloc(sizeof(int));
printf ("\n 1");
for (r=0;r<NumberOfPciCards;r++)
{
memset(&info[r], 0, sizeof(info[r]));
}
printf ("\n 2");
//Here the attach takes place.
for (r=0;r<NumberOfPciCards;r++)
{
(pci_attach(r) < 0) ? FuncPrint(1,r) : FuncPrint(0,r);
}
printf ("\n 3");
info[0].VendorId = 0x8086; //Wont be using this one
info[0].DeviceId = 0x3582; //Or this one
info[1].VendorId = 0x10B5; //WIll only be using this one PLX 9054 chip
info[1].DeviceId = 0x9054; //Also PLX 9054
info[2].VendorId = 0x8086; //Not used
info[2].DeviceId = 0x24cb; //Not used
printf ("\n 4");
//I attached the device and give it a handler and set some setting.
if ((PciDeviceHandler1 = pci_attach_device(0,PCI_SHARE|PCI_INIT_ALL, 0, &info[1])) == 0)
{
perror("pci_attach_device fail");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
for (i = 0; i < 6; i++)
//This just prints out some details of the card.
{
if (info[1].BaseAddressSize[i] > 0)
printf("Aperture %d: "
"Base 0x%llx Length %d bytes Type %s\n", i,
PCI_IS_MEM(info[1].CpuBaseAddress[i]) ? PCI_MEM_ADDR(info[1].CpuBaseAddress[i]) : PCI_IO_ADDR(info[1].CpuBaseAddress[i]),
info[1].BaseAddressSize[i],PCI_IS_MEM(info[1].CpuBaseAddress[i]) ? "MEM" : "IO");
}
printf("\nEnd of Device random info dump---\n");
printf("\nNEWs Address : %d\n",*(int*)NEW);
//Not sure if this is a legitimate way of memory allocation but I cant see to read the ram any other way.
NEW = mmap_device_memory(NULL, info[1].BaseAddressSize[3],PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE|PROT_NOCACHE, 0,info[1].CpuBaseAddress[3]);
//Here is where things are starting to get messy and REALLY long to just run through all the ram and dump it.
//Is there some other way I can dump the data in the ram into a file?
while (counter!=info[1].BaseAddressSize[3])
{
fprintf(fp, "%x",NEW[counter]);
counter++;
}
fclose(fp);
printf("0x%x",*Buffer);
}
A few issues that I can see:
You are writing blocks of 4 bytes - that's quite inefficient. The stream buffering in the C library may help with that to a degree, but using larger blocks would still be more efficient.
Even worse, you are writing out the memory dump in hexadecimal notation, rather than the bytes themselves. That conversion is very CPU-intensive, not to mention that the size of the output is essentially doubled. You would be better off writing raw binary data using e.g. fwrite().
Depending on the specifics of your system (is this on QNX?), reading from I/O-mapped memory may be slower than reading directly from physical memory, especially if your PCI device has to act as a relay. What exactly is it that you are doing?
In any case I would suggest using a profiler to actually find out where your program is spending most of its time. Even a rudimentary system monitor would allow you to determine if your program is CPU-bound or I/O-bound.
As it is, "waaaaaay to long" is hardly a valid measurement. How much data is being copied? How long does it take? Where is the output file located?
P.S.: I also have some concerns w.r.t. what you are trying to do, but that is slightly off-topic for this question...
For fastest speed: write the data in binary form and use the open() / write() / close() API-s. Since your data is already available in a contiguous block of (virtual) memory it is a waste to copy it to a temporary buffer (used by the fwrite(), fprintf(), etc. API-s).
The code using write() will be similar to:
int fd = open("filename.bin", O_RDWR|O_CREAT, S_IRWXU);
write(fd, (void*)NEW, 4*info[1].BaseAddressSize[3]);
close(fd);
You will need to add error handling and make sure that the buffer size is specified correctly.
To reiterate, you get the speed-up from:
avoiding the conversion from binary to ASCII (as pointed out by others above)
avoiding many calls to libc
reducing the number of system-calls (from inside libc)
eliminating the overhead of copying data to a temporary buffer inside the fwrite()/fprintf() and related functions (buffering would be useful if your data arrived in small chunks, including the case of converting to ASCII in 4 byte units)
I intentionally ignore commenting on other parts of your code as it is apparently not intended to be production quality yet and your question is focused on how to speed up writing data to a file.
Related
I have a couple of questions on this piece of code, running on a jetson nano:
#include "stdio.h"
#include "unistd.h"
#include "stdlib.h"
float gputemp = 0;
float cputemp = 0;
int count = 0;
int main() {
char* cpu;
char* gpu;
cpu = (char*)malloc(sizeof(char)*6);
gpu = (char*)malloc(sizeof(char)*6);
while (1) {
FILE* fcputemp = fopen("/sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone1/temp", "r");
FILE* fgputemp = fopen("/sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone2/temp","r");
if (!fcputemp || !fgputemp ) {
printf("Something went wrong\n");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
cputemp = atoi(fgets(cpu, 6, fcputemp))/1000;
gputemp = atoi(fgets(gpu, 6, fgputemp))/1000;
printf("\rCpu : %.2f, Gpu : %.2f. Elapsed time : %d", cputemp, gputemp, count);
fflush(stdout);
fclose(fcputemp);
fclose(fgputemp);
count++;
sleep(1);
}
}
Here I have to open, get the temperatures, and then close the file each loop iteration in order to get valid data (and dont segfault).
My concern here is the number of (expensive) kernel switches needed to do this.
I know that premature optimization is evil, but there is another way (or maybe the RIGHT way) to do that, opening the file only once?
And why the sensor interface (the file) cant update itself if I have it open?
P.S: Yes, I know, I didnt free cpu nor gpu variables, this is only "demo" code (just watch how i measure the time passed lol)
I'm not sure you can do this opening the files once and once only. You could try rewinding, but sysfs isn't a "real" filesystem and those aren't real files. If you rewind you might get the same data over and over, especially when using buffered calls like fopen().
The open operation is what prepares that data for reading. Since this is all managed by the kernel it should have very little overhead, and no actual disk activity. Consider that programs like top read thousands of these every second and it's no big deal.
For a class, I've been given the task of writing radix sort in parallel using pthreads, openmp, and MPI. My language of choice in this case is C -- I don't know C++ too well.
Anyways, the way I'm going about reading a text file is causing a segmentation fault at around 500MB file size. The files are line separated 32 bit numbers:
12351
1235234
12
53421
1234
I know C, but I don't know it well; I use things I know, and in this case the things I know are terribly inefficient. My code for reading the text file is as follows:
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdint.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <math.h>
int main(int argc, char **argv){
if(argc != 4) {
printf("rs_pthreads requires three arguments to run\n");
return -1;
}
char *fileName=argv[1];
uint32_t radixBits=atoi(argv[2]);
uint32_t numThreads=atoi(argv[3]);
if(radixBits > 32){
printf("radixBitx cannot be greater than 32\n");
return -1;
}
FILE *fileForReading = fopen( fileName, "r" );
if(fileForReading == NULL){
perror("Failed to open the file\n");
return -1;
}
char* charBuff = malloc(1024);
if(charBuff == NULL){
perror("Error with malloc for charBuff");
return -1;
}
uint32_t numNumbers = 0;
while(fgetc(fileForReading) != EOF){
numNumbers++;
fgets(charBuff, 1024, fileForReading);
}
uint32_t numbersToSort[numNumbers];
rewind(fileForReading);
int location;
for(location = 0; location < numNumbers; location++){
fgets(charBuff, 1024, fileForReading);
numbersToSort[location] = atoi(charBuff);
}
At a file of 50 million numbers (~500MB), I'm getting a segmentation fault at rewind of all places. My knowledge of how file streams work is almost non-existent. My guess is it's trying to malloc without enough memory or something, but I don't know.
So, I've got a two parter here: How is rewind segmentation faulting? Am I just doing a poor job before rewind and not checking some system call I should be?
And, what is a more efficient way to read in an arbitrary amount of numbers from a text file?
Any help is appreciated.
I think the most likely cause here is (ironically enough) a stack overflow. Your numbersToSort array is allocated on the stack, and the stack has a fixed size (varies by compiler and operating system, but 1 MB is a typical number). You should dynamically allocate numbersToSort on the heap (which has much more available space) using malloc():
uint32_t *numbersToSort = malloc(sizeof(uint32_t) * numNumbers);
Don't forget to deallocate it later:
free(numbersToSort);
I would also point out that your first-pass loop, which is intended to count the number of lines, will fail if there are any blank lines. This is because on a blank line, the first character is '\n', and fgetc() will consume it; the next call to fgets() will then be reading the following line, and you'll have skipped the blank one in your count.
The problem is in this line
uint32_t numbersToSort[numNumbers];
You are attempting to allocate a huge array in stack, your stack size is in few KBytes (Moreover older C standards don't allow this). So you can try this
uint32_t *numbersToSort; /* Declare it with other declarations */
/* Remove uint32_t numbersToSort[numNumbers]; */
/* Add the code below */
numbersToSort = malloc(sizeof(uint32_t) * numNumbers);
if (!numbersToSort) {
/* No memory; do cleanup and bail out */
return 1;
}
Hello everyone I'm new to C but I've recently been getting a weird segfault error with my fopen.
FILE* thefile = fopen(argv[1],"r");
The problem I've been having is that this code works on other smaller text files, but when I try with a file around 400MB it will give a sefault error. I've even tried hardcoding the filename but that doesn't work either. Could there be a problem in the rest of the code causing the segfault on this line?(doubt it but would like to know if its possible. It's just really odd that no errors come up for a small text file, but a large text file does get errors.
Thanks!
EDIT* didn't want to bog this down with too much but heres my code
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
if(argc != 3)
{
printf("[ERROR] Invalid number of arguments. Please pass 2 arguments, input_bound_file (column 1:probe, columne 2,...: samples) and desired_output_file_name");
exit(2);
}
int i,j;
rankAvg= g_hash_table_new(g_direct_hash, g_direct_equal);
rankCnt= g_hash_table_new(g_direct_hash, g_direct_equal);
table = g_hash_table_new_full (g_direct_hash, g_direct_equal, NULL, g_free);
getCounts(argv[1]);
printf("NC=: %i nR =: %i",nC,nR);
double srcMat[nR][nC];
int rankMat[nR][nC];
double normMat[nR][nC];
int sorts[nR][nC];
char line[100];
FILE* thefile = fopen(argv[1],"r");
printf("%s\n", strerror(errno));
FILE* output = fopen(argv[2],"w");
char* rownames[100];
i=0;j = 1;
int processedProbeNumber = 0;
int previousStamp = 0;
fgets(line,sizeof(line),thefile); //read file
while(fgets(line,sizeof(line),thefile) != NULL)
{
cleanSpace(line); //creates only one space between entries
char dest[100];
int len = strlen(line);
for(i = 0; i < len; i++)
{
if(line[i] == ' ') //read in rownames
{
rownames[j] = strncpy(dest, line, i);
dest[i] = '\0';
break;
}
}
char* token = strtok(line, " ");
token = strtok(NULL, " ");
i=1;
while(token!=NULL) //put words into array
{
rankMat[j][i]= abs(atof(token));
srcMat[j][i] = abs(atof(token));
token = strtok(NULL, " ");
i++;
}
// set the first column as a row id
j++;
processedProbeNumber++;
if( (processedProbeNumber-previousStamp) >= 10000)
{
previousStamp = processedProbeNumber;
printf("\tnumber of loaded lines = %i",processedProbeNumber);
}
}
printf("\ttotal number of loaded lines = %i \n",processedProbeNumber);
fclose(thefile);
How do you know that fopen is seg faulting? If you're simply sprinkling printf in the code, there's a chance the standard output isn't sent to the console before the error occurs. Obviously, if you're using a debugger you will know exactly where the segfault occured.
Looking at your code, nR and nC aren't defined so I don't know how big rankMat and srcMat are, but two thoughts crossed my mind while looking at your code:
You don't check i and j to ensure that they don't exceed nR and nC
If nR and nC are sufficiently large, that may mean you're using a very large amount of memory on the stack (srcMat, rankMat, normMat, and sorts are all huge). I don't know what environemnt you're running in, but some systems my not be able to handle huge stacks (Linux, Windows, etc. should be fine, but I do a lot of embedded work). I normally allocate very large structures in the heap (using malloc).
Generally files 2GB (2**31) or larger are the ones you can expect to get this on. This is because you are starting to run out of space in a 32-bit integer for things like file indices, and one bit is typically taken up for directions in relative offsets.
Supposedly on Linux you can get around this issue by using the following macro defintion:
#define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
Some systems also provide a separate API call for large file opens (eg: fopen64() in MKS).
400Mb should not be considered a "large file" nowadays. I would reserve this for files larger than, say, 2Gb.
Also, just opening a file is very unlikely to give a segfault. WOuld you show us the code that access the file? I suspect some other factor is at play here.
UPDATE
I still can't tell exactly what's happening here. There are strange things that could be legitimate: you discard the first line and also the first token of each line.
You also assign to all the rownames[j] (except the first one) the address of dest which is a variable that has a block scope and whose associated memory is most likely to be reused outside that block. I hope you don't rely on rownames[j] to be any meaningful (but then why you have them?) and you never try to access them.
C99 allows you to mix variable declarations with actual instructions but I would suggest a little bit of cleaning to make the code clearer (also a better indentation would help).
From the symptoms I would look for some memory corruption somewhere. On small files (and hence less tokens) it may go unnoticed, but with larger files (and many more token) it fires a segfault.
I have a C application which generates a lot of output and for which speed is critical. The program is basically a loop over a large (8-12GB) binary input file which must be read sequentially. In each iteration the read bytes are processed and output is generated and written to multiple files, but never to multiple files at the same time. So if you are at the point where output is generated and there are 4 output files you write to either file 0 or 1 or 2, or 3. At the end of the iteration I now write the output using fwrite(), thereby waiting for the write operation to finish. The total number of output operations is large, up to 4 million per file, and output size of files ranges from 100mb to 3.5GB. The program runs on a basic multicore processor.
I want to write output in a separate thread and I know this can be done with
Asyncronous I/O
Creating threads
I/O completion ports
I have 2 type of questions, namely conceptual and code specific.
Conceptual Question
What would be the best approach. Note that the application should be portable to Linux, however, I don't see how that would be very important for my choice for 1-3, since I would write a wrapper around anything kernel/API specific. For me the most important criteria is speed. I have read that option 1 is not that likely to increase the performance of the program and that the kernel in any case creates new threads for the i/o operation, so then why not use option (2) immediately with the advantage that it seems easier to program (also since I did not succeed with option (1), see code issues below).
Note that I read https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3689759/how-can-i-run-a-specific-function-of-thread-asynchronously-in-c-c, but I dont see a motivation on what to use based on the nature of the application. So I hope somebody could provide me with some advice what would be best in my situation. Also from the book "Windows System Programming" by Johnson M. Hart, I know that the recommendation is using threads, mainly because of the simplicity. However, will it also be fastest?
Code Question
This question involves the attempts I made so far to make asynchronous I/O work. I understand that its a big piece of code so that its not that easy to look into. In any case I would really appreciate any attempt.
To decrease execution time I try to write the output by means of a new thread using WINAPI via CreateFile() with FILE_FLAGGED_OVERLAP with an overlapped structure. I have created a sample program in which I try to get this to work. However, I encountered 2 problems:
The file is only opened in overlapped mode when I delete an already existing file (I have tried using CreateFile in different modes (CREATE_ALWAYS, CREATE_NEW, OPEN_EXISTING), but this does not help).
Only the first WriteFile is executed asynchronously. The remainder of WriteFile commands is synchronous. For this problem I already consulted http://support.microsoft.com/kb/156932. It seems that the problem I have is related to the fact that "any write operation to a file that extends its length will be synchronous". I've already tried to solve this by increasing file size/valid data size (commented region in code). However, I still do not get it to work. I'm aware of the fact that it could be the case that to get most out of asynchronous io i should CreateFile with FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING, however I cannot get this to work as well.
Please note that the program creates a file of about 120mb in the path of execution. Also note that print statements "not ok" are not desireable, I would like to see "can do work in background" appear on my screen... What goes wrong here?
#include <windows.h>
#include <math.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>
#define ASYNC // remove this definition to run synchronously (i.e. using fwrite)
#ifdef ASYNC
struct _OVERLAPPED *pOverlapped;
HANDLE *pEventH;
HANDLE *pFile;
#else
FILE *pFile;
#endif
#define DIM_X 100
#define DIM_Y 150000
#define _PRINTERROR(msgs)\
{printf("file: %s, line: %d, %s",__FILE__,__LINE__,msgs);\
fflush(stdout);\
return 0;} \
#define _PRINTF(msgs)\
{printf(msgs);\
fflush(stdout);} \
#define _START_TIMER \
time_t time1,time2; \
clock_t clock1; \
time(&time1); \
printf("start time: %s",ctime(&time1)); \
fflush(stdout);
#define _END_TIMER\
time(&time2);\
clock1 = clock();\
printf("end time: %s",ctime(&time2));\
printf("elapsed processor time: %.2f\n",(((float)clock1)/CLOCKS_PER_SEC));\
fflush(stdout);
double aio_dat[DIM_Y] = {0};
double do_compute(double A,double B, int arr_len);
int main()
{
_START_TIMER;
const char *pName = "test1.bin";
DWORD dwBytesToWrite;
BOOL bErrorFlag = FALSE;
int j=0;
int i=0;
int fOverlapped=0;
#ifdef ASYNC
// create / open the file
pFile=CreateFile(pName,
GENERIC_WRITE, // open for writing
0, // share write access
NULL, // default security
CREATE_ALWAYS, // create new/overwrite existing
FILE_FLAG_OVERLAPPED, // | FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING, // overlapped file
NULL); // no attr. template
// check whether file opening was ok
if(pFile==INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE){
printf("%x\n",GetLastError());
_PRINTERROR("file not opened properly\n");
}
// make the overlapped structure
pOverlapped = calloc(1,sizeof(struct _OVERLAPPED));
pOverlapped->Offset = 0;
pOverlapped->OffsetHigh = 0;
// put event handle in overlapped structure
if(!(pOverlapped->hEvent = CreateEvent(NULL,TRUE,FALSE,NULL))){
printf("%x\n",GetLastError());
_PRINTERROR("error in createevent\n");
}
#else
pFile = fopen(pName,"wb");
#endif
// create some output
for(j=0;j<DIM_Y;j++){
aio_dat[j] = do_compute(i, j, DIM_X);
}
// determine how many bytes should be written
dwBytesToWrite = (DWORD)sizeof(aio_dat);
for(i=0;i<DIM_X;i++){ // do this DIM_X times
#ifdef ASYNC
//if(i>0){
//SetFilePointer(pFile,dwBytesToWrite,NULL,FILE_CURRENT);
//if(!(SetEndOfFile(pFile))){
// printf("%i\n",pFile);
// _PRINTERROR("error in set end of file\n");
//}
//SetFilePointer(pFile,-dwBytesToWrite,NULL,FILE_CURRENT);
//}
// write the bytes
if(!(bErrorFlag = WriteFile(pFile,aio_dat,dwBytesToWrite,NULL,pOverlapped))){
// check whether io pending or some other error
if(GetLastError()!=ERROR_IO_PENDING){
printf("lasterror: %x\n",GetLastError());
_PRINTERROR("error while writing file\n");
}
else{
fOverlapped=1;
}
}
else{
// if you get here output got immediately written; bad!
fOverlapped=0;
}
if(fOverlapped){
// do background, this msgs is what I want to see
for(j=0;j<DIM_Y;j++){
aio_dat[j] = do_compute(i, j, DIM_X);
}
for(j=0;j<DIM_Y;j++){
aio_dat[j] = do_compute(i, j, DIM_X);
}
_PRINTF("can do work in background\n");
}
else{
// not overlapped, this message is bad
_PRINTF("not ok\n");
}
// wait to continue
if((WaitForSingleObject(pOverlapped->hEvent,INFINITE))!=WAIT_OBJECT_0){
_PRINTERROR("waiting did not succeed\n");
}
// reset event structure
if(!(ResetEvent(pOverlapped->hEvent))){
printf("%x\n",GetLastError());
_PRINTERROR("error in resetevent\n");
}
pOverlapped->Offset+=dwBytesToWrite;
#else
fwrite(aio_dat,sizeof(double),DIM_Y,pFile);
for(j=0;j<DIM_Y;j++){
aio_dat[j] = do_compute(i, j, DIM_X);
}
for(j=0;j<DIM_Y;j++){
aio_dat[j] = do_compute(i, j, DIM_X);
}
#endif
}
#ifdef ASYNC
CloseHandle(pFile);
free(pOverlapped);
#else
fclose(pFile);
#endif
_END_TIMER;
return 1;
}
double do_compute(double A,double B, int arr_len)
{
int i;
double res = 0;
double *xA = malloc(arr_len * sizeof(double));
double *xB = malloc(arr_len * sizeof(double));
if ( !xA || !xB )
abort();
for (i = 0; i < arr_len; i++) {
xA[i] = sin(A);
xB[i] = cos(B);
res = res + xA[i]*xA[i];
}
free(xA);
free(xB);
return res;
}
Useful links
http://software.intel.com/sites/products/documentation/studio/composer/en-us/2011/compiler_c/cref_cls/common/cppref_asynchioC_aio_read_write_eg.htm
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-async/?ca=dgr-lnxw02aUsingPOISIXAIOAPI
http://www.flounder.com/asynchexplorer.htm#Asynchronous%20I/O
I know this is a big question and I would like to thank everybody in advance who takes the trouble reading it and perhaps even respond!
You should be able to get this to work using the OVERLAPPED structure.
You're on the right track: the system is preventing you from writing asynchronously because every WriteFile extends the size of the file. However, you're doing the file size extension wrong. Simply calling SetFileSize will not actually reserve space in the MFT. Use the SetFileValidData function. This will allocate clusters for your file (note that they will contain whatever garbage the disk had there) and you should be able to execute WriteFile and your computation in parallel.
I would stay away from FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING. You're after more performance with parallelism I presume? Don't prevent the cache from doing its job.
Another option that you did not consider is a memory mapped file. Those are available on Windows and Linux. There is a handy Boost abstraction that you could use.
With a memory mapped file, every thread in your process could write its output to the file on its own time, assuming that the record sizes are known and each thread has its own output area.
The operating system will take care of writing the mapped pages to disk when needed or when it gets around to it or when you close the file. Maybe when you close the file. Now that I think about it, some operating systems may require that you call msync to guarantee it.
I don't see why you would want to write asynchronously. Doing things in parallel does not make them faster in all cases. If you write two file at the same time to the same disk, it will almost always be a lot faster. If that is the case, just write them one after another.
If you have some fancy drive like SSD or a virtual RAM drive, parallel writing could be faster. You have to create an file with at full size and then do your parallel magic.
Asynchronous writing is nice, but is done by any OS anyway. The potential gain for you is that you can do other things than writing to disk like displaying a progress bar. This is where multi-threading can help you.
So imho you should use serial writing or parallel writing to multiple disks.
hth
I want to use /dev/random or /dev/urandom in C. How can I do it? I don't know how can I handle them in C, if someone knows please tell me how. Thank you.
In general, it's a better idea to avoid opening files to get random data, because of how many points of failure there are in the procedure.
On recent Linux distributions, the getrandom system call can be used to get crypto-secure random numbers, and it cannot fail if GRND_RANDOM is not specified as a flag and the read amount is at most 256 bytes.
As of October 2017, OpenBSD, Darwin and Linux (with -lbsd) now all have an implementation of arc4random that is crypto-secure and that cannot fail. That makes it a very attractive option:
char myRandomData[50];
arc4random_buf(myRandomData, sizeof myRandomData); // done!
Otherwise, you can use the random devices as if they were files. You read from them and you get random data. I'm using open/read here, but fopen/fread would work just as well.
int randomData = open("/dev/urandom", O_RDONLY);
if (randomData < 0)
{
// something went wrong
}
else
{
char myRandomData[50];
ssize_t result = read(randomData, myRandomData, sizeof myRandomData);
if (result < 0)
{
// something went wrong
}
}
You may read many more random bytes before closing the file descriptor. /dev/urandom never blocks and always fills in as many bytes as you've requested, unless the system call is interrupted by a signal. It is considered cryptographically secure and should be your go-to random device.
/dev/random is more finicky. On most platforms, it can return fewer bytes than you've asked for and it can block if not enough bytes are available. This makes the error handling story more complex:
int randomData = open("/dev/random", O_RDONLY);
if (randomData < 0)
{
// something went wrong
}
else
{
char myRandomData[50];
size_t randomDataLen = 0;
while (randomDataLen < sizeof myRandomData)
{
ssize_t result = read(randomData, myRandomData + randomDataLen, (sizeof myRandomData) - randomDataLen);
if (result < 0)
{
// something went wrong
}
randomDataLen += result;
}
close(randomData);
}
There are other accurate answers above. I needed to use a FILE* stream, though. Here's what I did...
int byte_count = 64;
char data[64];
FILE *fp;
fp = fopen("/dev/urandom", "r");
fread(&data, 1, byte_count, fp);
fclose(fp);
Just open the file for reading and then read data. In C++11 you may wish to use std::random_device which provides cross-platform access to such devices.
Zneak is 100% correct. Its also very common to read a buffer of random numbers that is slightly larger than what you'll need on startup. You can then populate an array in memory, or write them to your own file for later re-use.
A typical implementation of the above:
typedef struct prandom {
struct prandom *prev;
int64_t number;
struct prandom *next;
} prandom_t;
This becomes more or less like a tape that just advances which can be magically replenished by another thread as needed. There are a lot of services that provide large file dumps of nothing but random numbers that are generated with much stronger generators such as:
Radioactive decay
Optical behavior (photons hitting a semi transparent mirror)
Atmospheric noise (not as strong as the above)
Farms of intoxicated monkeys typing on keyboards and moving mice (kidding)
Don't use 'pre-packaged' entropy for cryptographic seeds, in case that doesn't go without saying. Those sets are fine for simulations, not fine at all for generating keys and such.
Not being concerned with quality, if you need a lot of numbers for something like a monte carlo simulation, it's much better to have them available in a way that will not cause read() to block.
However, remember, the randomness of a number is as deterministic as the complexity involved in generating it. /dev/random and /dev/urandom are convenient, but not as strong as using a HRNG (or downloading a large dump from a HRNG). Also worth noting that /dev/random refills via entropy, so it can block for quite a while depending on circumstances.
zneak's answer covers it simply, however the reality is more complicated than that. For example, you need to consider whether /dev/{u}random really is the random number device in the first place. Such a scenario may occur if your machine has been compromised and the devices replaced with symlinks to /dev/zero or a sparse file. If this happens, the random stream is now completely predictable.
The simplest way (at least on Linux and FreeBSD) is to perform an ioctl call on the device that will only succeed if the device is a random generator:
int data;
int result = ioctl(fd, RNDGETENTCNT, &data);
// Upon success data now contains amount of entropy available in bits
If this is performed before the first read of the random device, then there's a fair bet that you've got the random device. So #zneak's answer can better be extended to be:
int randomData = open("/dev/random", O_RDONLY);
int entropy;
int result = ioctl(randomData, RNDGETENTCNT, &entropy);
if (!result) {
// Error - /dev/random isn't actually a random device
return;
}
if (entropy < sizeof(int) * 8) {
// Error - there's not enough bits of entropy in the random device to fill the buffer
return;
}
int myRandomInteger;
size_t randomDataLen = 0;
while (randomDataLen < sizeof myRandomInteger)
{
ssize_t result = read(randomData, ((char*)&myRandomInteger) + randomDataLen, (sizeof myRandomInteger) - randomDataLen);
if (result < 0)
{
// error, unable to read /dev/random
}
randomDataLen += result;
}
close(randomData);
The Insane Coding blog covered this, and other pitfalls not so long ago; I strongly recommend reading the entire article. I have to give credit to their where this solution was pulled from.
Edited to add (2014-07-25)...
Co-incidentally, I read last night that as part of the LibReSSL effort, Linux appears to be getting a GetRandom() syscall. As at time of writing, there's no word of when it will be available in a kernel general release. However this would be the preferred interface to get cryptographically secure random data as it removes all pitfalls that access via files provides. See also the LibReSSL possible implementation.