Bug#285371: Still a problem.

[Marc Haber]

Hi,

On Sun, Dec 19, 2004 at 11:14:50PM -0800, Yazz D. Atlas wrote:
> # sysctl -n kernel/random/entropy_avail
> 0
> 
> I just can't seem to get any entropy on this system. Adding a line to
> /etc/sysctl.conf like...  kernel/random/entropy_avail=3584 didn't help
> either. Just causes an error message. Even rebooted the system...

Does the system have a local disk?

Headless servers are notoriously short of entropy, I have been told.

If your hardware is sufficiently recent, it might have a hardware rng,
which needs to be coupled to /dev/random by some means, for example
the rngd daemon from the Debian package rng-tools.

I am inclined to close this bug, as it is really a local resource
issue. I think it is a good idea that gnutls tries to get its entropy
for key generation from /dev/random which blocks if no more entropy is
available.

It can be discussed with the gnutls people whether gnutls should have
a timeout, leaving the decision whether to continue waiting for
entropy to the application. However, providing a sufficient amount of
entropy is probably the job of the local sysadmin.

I do not think that exim should work around this issue.

Andreas, I'd like to downgrade this bug to wishlist and mark it
wontfix, if you don't object.

Greetings
Marc

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