I am running into an issue where java is slow when used over SSL. The solution is to add -Djava.security.egd=file:/dev/./urandom to java at the command line. Since I have multiple JVM's, I dont want to modify every single JVM to contain this string and hence would like to add it to the file $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/security/java.security Now, the java.security file already contains securerandom.source=file:/dev/urandom Two questions on this : Why and how is "/dev/urandom" different from "/dev/./urandom". Why doesnt java accept "/dev/urandom" For the JVM's that I have running, how can I tell whether they are using the correct urandmon device (vs random) Continue reading...