From 7a40118fa1132ee3e1f0427fcbf5a8d3d064a087 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Daniel Kahn Gillmor Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2008 22:37:50 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] reporting bug about agonizingly long key generation. --- ...rs-take-too-long-to-generate-host-key.mdwn | 26 +++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 26 insertions(+) create mode 100644 website/bugs/headless-servers-take-too-long-to-generate-host-key.mdwn diff --git a/website/bugs/headless-servers-take-too-long-to-generate-host-key.mdwn b/website/bugs/headless-servers-take-too-long-to-generate-host-key.mdwn new file mode 100644 index 0000000..634f731 --- /dev/null +++ b/website/bugs/headless-servers-take-too-long-to-generate-host-key.mdwn @@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ +[[meta title="Running `monkeysphere gen-key` on a headless server takes way too long"]] + +When i try to generate a key on a headless machine (no kbd, no mouse, +no Human Input Device (HID) at all), `monkeysphere gen-key` hangs for +a *very* long time (a half hour at least) during the generation +process, particularly at this point: + + ms: generating server key... + + Not enough random bytes available. Please do some other work to give + the OS a chance to collect more entropy! (Need 197 more bytes) + +And sure enough, there really is very little entropy in these systems +at the time requested: + + 0 chomsky:~# cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail + 32 + 0 chomsky:~# + +It's not clear to me how to increase the entropy available to the +kernel without an HID. + +I've seen this happen on two machines now in the last week, and was +able to resolve it on the first one by plugging in a keyboard and +"massaging" it. This won't work for a machine that's out of physical +range, and has no keyboard to be plugged in anyway. -- 2.26.2