summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/website/bugs
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorDaniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg@fifthhorseman.net>2008-08-06 22:37:50 -0400
committerDaniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg@fifthhorseman.net>2008-08-06 22:37:50 -0400
commit7a40118fa1132ee3e1f0427fcbf5a8d3d064a087 (patch)
treed6f1f6a2ee157210fe2d55b9eec84e0e6cb0e313 /website/bugs
parent55e7ac39ba0e3e200d23302b6ac0efcfaa967a05 (diff)
reporting bug about agonizingly long key generation.
Diffstat (limited to 'website/bugs')
-rw-r--r--website/bugs/headless-servers-take-too-long-to-generate-host-key.mdwn26
1 files changed, 26 insertions, 0 deletions
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.