Mailing List Archive: GNUpg v1.01/FreeBSD-20000214-CURRENT

GNUpg v1.01/FreeBSD-20000214-CURRENT

marius at alpha1

Feb 23, 2000, 12:29 AM

Post #1 of 6 (1132 views)

Don't know if this is an isolated problem, and I'm relatively new to GPG
(been using PGP2.6.2 and PGP5 for some time now).. I scanned the mailing
list, read the bug list, to no avail.

gpg --gen-key runs somewhat fine on the aforementioned FreeBSD system, but
when it goes to generate the random bytes, it says "Not enough random
bytes available. Please do some other work to give
the OS a chance to collect more entropy! (Need 20 more bytes)"

I've updated the locatedb, done make clean in /usr/ports, compiled XFree,
etc during this process, but it says this none-the-less every time.

Am I doing something wrong, and if not, what can I do to help track down
the issue at hand?

--
Marius Strom <marius@alpha1.net>
Professional Geek/Unix System Administrator
Alpha1 Internet <http://www.alpha1.net>
http://www.marius.org/marius.pgp 0x5645C228

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice...
...In practice, there is a big difference.

Re: GNUpg v1.01/FreeBSD-20000214-CURRENT [ In reply to ]

Feb 23, 2000, 1:40 AM

Post #2 of 6 (1108 views)

Marius Strom, at 01:29 on Wed, 23 Feb 2000, wrote:

> gpg --gen-key runs somewhat fine on the aforementioned FreeBSD system, but
> when it goes to generate the random bytes, it says "Not enough random
> bytes available. Please do some other work to give
> the OS a chance to collect more entropy! (Need 20 more bytes)"

You just need to wait this out. Give it a couple minutes. Doing
intensive things on your system helps to increase the data available to
/dev/random.

--
Frank Tobin http://www.neverending.org/~ftobin/

"To learn what is good and what is to be valued,
those truths which cannot be shaken or changed." Myst: The Book of Atrus

OpenPGP: 4F86 3BBB A816 6F0A 340F 6003 56FF D10A 260C 4FA3

Re: GNUpg v1.01/FreeBSD-20000214-CURRENT [ In reply to ]

Feb 23, 2000, 2:49 AM

Post #3 of 6 (1106 views)

On Wed, 23 Feb 2000, Frank Tobin wrote:

> You just need to wait this out. Give it a couple minutes. Doing
> intensive things on your system helps to increase the data available to
> /dev/random.

Should become better with the next release (or 1.0.1c).

Werner

Re: GNUpg v1.01/FreeBSD-20000214-CURRENT [ In reply to ]

marius at alpha1

Feb 23, 2000, 8:11 AM

Post #4 of 6 (1106 views)

Frank,
I gave it 30 minutes last night while doing lots of things. No change,
except it started regenerating data and then requested 128 more bytes of
entropy.

(Celeron 500.. Would hope gpg keygen wouldn't take 30 mins)

--
Marius Strom <marius@alpha1.net>
Professional Geek/Unix System Administrator
Alpha1 Internet <http://www.alpha1.net>
http://www.marius.org/marius.pgp 0x5645C228

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice...
...In practice, there is a big difference.

On Wed, 23 Feb 2000, Frank Tobin wrote:

> Marius Strom, at 01:29 on Wed, 23 Feb 2000, wrote:
>
> > gpg --gen-key runs somewhat fine on the aforementioned FreeBSD system, but
> > when it goes to generate the random bytes, it says "Not enough random
> > bytes available. Please do some other work to give
> > the OS a chance to collect more entropy! (Need 20 more bytes)"
>
> You just need to wait this out. Give it a couple minutes. Doing
> intensive things on your system helps to increase the data available to
> /dev/random.
>
>

Re: GNUpg v1.01/FreeBSD-20000214-CURRENT [ In reply to ]

Feb 23, 2000, 10:26 PM

Post #5 of 6 (1102 views)

On Wed, Feb 23, 2000 at 09:11:15AM -0600, Marius Strom wrote:
> Frank,
> I gave it 30 minutes last night while doing lots of things. No change,
> except it started regenerating data and then requested 128 more bytes of
> entropy.
>
> (Celeron 500.. Would hope gpg keygen wouldn't take 30 mins)

GPG didn't do anything in these 30 minutes, it simply waited for random data
to become available from /dev/random.
If you're working locally, FreeBSD should collect random data from your
typing, but if you're working from an ssh session, the box won't have a good
source of entropy to fill /dev/random.
You can add
rand_irqs="14"
to you /etc/rc.conf to use IRQ 14 (IDE) or your SCSI card IRQ as a source of
random data. See random(4) and /etc/defaults/rc.conf. I don't think that
using your network card IRQ is really secure.

Re: GNUpg v1.01/FreeBSD-20000214-CURRENT [ In reply to ]

marius at alpha1

Feb 24, 2000, 12:20 PM

Post #6 of 6 (1102 views)

Good call -- this fixed the problem.

--
Marius Strom <marius@alpha1.net>
Professional Geek/Unix System Administrator
Alpha1 Internet <http://www.alpha1.net>
http://www.marius.org/marius.pgp 0x5645C228

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice...
...In practice, there is a big difference.

On Thu, 24 Feb 2000, [iso-8859-1] Rémi Guyomarch wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 23, 2000 at 09:11:15AM -0600, Marius Strom wrote:
> > Frank,
> > I gave it 30 minutes last night while doing lots of things. No change,
> > except it started regenerating data and then requested 128 more bytes of
> > entropy.
> >
> > (Celeron 500.. Would hope gpg keygen wouldn't take 30 mins)
>
> GPG didn't do anything in these 30 minutes, it simply waited for random data
> to become available from /dev/random.
> If you're working locally, FreeBSD should collect random data from your
> typing, but if you're working from an ssh session, the box won't have a good
> source of entropy to fill /dev/random.
> You can add
> rand_irqs="14"
> to you /etc/rc.conf to use IRQ 14 (IDE) or your SCSI card IRQ as a source of
> random data. See random(4) and /etc/defaults/rc.conf. I don't think that
> using your network card IRQ is really secure.
>