From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Nov 21 8:54:46 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F1CB537B401 for ; Thu, 21 Nov 2002 08:54:44 -0800 (PST) Received: from dc.cis.okstate.edu (dc.cis.okstate.edu [139.78.100.219]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 85A9643E42 for ; Thu, 21 Nov 2002 08:54:44 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from martin@dc.cis.okstate.edu) Received: from dc.cis.okstate.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by dc.cis.okstate.edu (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id gALGsXG30970 for ; Thu, 21 Nov 2002 10:54:34 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from martin@dc.cis.okstate.edu) Message-Id: <200211211654.gALGsXG30970@dc.cis.okstate.edu> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: How to Start the Random Number Generator Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 10:54:33 -0600 From: Martin McCormick Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I need to run the application dnssec-keygen which uses /dev/random to generate keys for signing domain name server transactions. If I run it on any of the FreeBSD systems I have set up which are all running Version 4.5 or 4.7, this application hangs due to lack of entropy, or at least that is one reason. I was directed to use rndcontrol to turn on various interrupts in the random number generator such as the keyboard and IDE controller interrupts and the system would start to build an entropy pool. Rndcontrol showed me that there were no interrupts being sampled right now so I told it to look at IRQS 3, 14 and 15. the man page in section 4 for random mentions a seed to get everything started, but I can't seem to find any other information to cause /dev/random to spit out data yet. The dnssec-keygen application still hangs so I am obviously missing some step. /dev/random does exist on the systems in question and seems to return a null which is not what it is supposed to be doing. What else should I look at? Thank you. Martin McCormick To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message