On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 02:26:08PM -0700, Vladimir G. Ivanovic wrote: > I am not logged in remotely but locally. I've had a "cat /dev/random" > running in a GNOME Terminal tab (window) now for several hours while I > read mail & surfed. Eeek! One of the problems with /dev/random (as opposed to /dev/urandom) is that any user can read it, drain all the entropy, and prevent others from getting any. As a test it can be interesting, but don't do that otherwise. (Don't forget an extra cat left running on a different console.) Kill the cat. cd to /proc/sys/kernel/random and look around. Specifically, cat entropy_avail. I am guessing you will see nothing. Now cat a few bytes into /dev/random and cat entropy_avail again. Did any show up? If so, then things are as I expect, you need to tell your mouse and keyboard and other devices to contribute entropy. I would have to start searching through kernel sources and googling to find out how. -kb, the Kent who has run off the end of his immediate knowledge. P.S. Did you do a standard install? What strange things have you done? (Compile your own kernel? Mess with boot initializations?)
