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-rw-r--r--website/bugs/headless-servers-take-too-long-to-generate-host-key.mdwn26
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+[[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.