From owner-freebsd-ports Wed Aug 8 19:38:50 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Received: from ralf.artlogix.com (sense-mcglk-240.oz.net [216.39.168.240]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9DC0F37B401 for ; Wed, 8 Aug 2001 19:38:47 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mcglk@artlogix.com) Received: by ralf.artlogix.com (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 44E861B9EB8; Wed, 8 Aug 2001 19:38:44 -0700 (PDT) To: ports@freebsd.org Subject: gpg 1.0.6 question regarding --gen-key and /dev/random. From: Ken McGlothlen Date: 08 Aug 2001 19:38:43 -0700 Message-ID: <87pua67ya4.fsf@ralf.artlogix.com> Lines: 29 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) XEmacs/21.1 (Cuyahoga Valley) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org I recently installed gpg 1.0.6, under the pretense that it was about time I started using some sort of encryption and digital signing package on a somewhat more regular basis. It installed smoothly, runs fine, except that I can't seem to generate a key very efficiently using the --gen-key option. I select the defaults on what kind of key I want (DSA and ElGamal), ask for a 1024-bit key (again, the default), ask it for a 146-day key (expires January 1), give it my real name and email address, type in a passphrase twice, and then I get this: We need to generate a lot of random bytes. It is a good idea to perform some other action (type on the keyboard, move the mouse, utilize the disks) during the prime generation; this gives the random number generator a better chance to gain enough entropy. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.+++++++++++++++..++++++++++++++[...] Not enough random bytes available. Please do some other work to give the OS a chance to collect more entropy! (Need 300 more bytes) I figured, well, that should be easy enough---I have to upgrade mozilla from ports anyway. So I started a "make" on /usr/ports/www/mozilla/, and read my mail and some Usenet from my Gnus process, and so on. I started this up at 5:30pm, roughly. It's now after 7:30pm. gpg hasn't given me any indication that it's getting more random bytes (no symbols are printing), and it's using no CPU time. Mozilla is still compiling (this on a 700MHz Athlon---dang!), and I've been doing a bunch of other things as well. Is something broken? Should gpg be using /dev/urandom instead of /dev/random? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-ports" in the body of the message