Mailing List Archive

>>>"LH" == Lars Hecking <lhecking@nmrc.ucc.ie> writes:

LH> I have now recompiled gpg 1.0.1e on Solaris to use Andreas Meier's
LH> random device (cf. recent thread on -devel ;)

I did something similar some months ago to let it work with the
/dev/random as provided by SUNWski. I had to patch the sources to do
that. So, this thread also belongs to -devel. ;-)

Or do you mean you patched it as well?

LH> Is there a real problem, or is this just a platform-specific precaution
LH> as Solaris generally has no random device?

It's because your random device is set to 'unix' ...

What I did was to specify "linux" as rng (works only with patched
sources) because then the source expects a /dev/random to be there.

LH> I am pretty certain that this binary of gpg knows about /dev/random,
LH> whereas the previous version doesn't:

LH> $ strings gpg | grep '/dev/[ur]'
LH> /dev/random
LH> /dev/urandom
LH> $ strings /usr/local/bin/gpg | grep '/dev/[ur]'
LH> $

That's not enough. I can compile binaries that know about several rng's
but you have to specify which one to use. The standard one with Solaris
is the "kludge" ... :(

So either one patches the source (as I did) or we hope for Solaris
/dev/random support in the official gpg sources as, by now, two
/dev/randoms seem to exist (SUNWski ans Andreas'). But I guess Andreas
Meier's random device has to be examined before Werner "officially"
suggests its use. Saying that, there's always egd ... :-)

Regards,
Nils
--
Nils Ellmenreich - Fak. fuer Math./Informatik - Please use gpg - Nils @
http://www.fmi.uni-passau.de/~nils - Univ. Passau - Uni-Passau.DE

> LH> I have now recompiled gpg 1.0.1e on Solaris to use Andreas Meier's
> LH> random device (cf. recent thread on -devel ;)
>
> I did something similar some months ago to let it work with the
> /dev/random as provided by SUNWski. I had to patch the sources to do
> that. So, this thread also belongs to -devel. ;-)
>
> Or do you mean you patched it as well?

I didn't. Back to -users :)

> It's because your random device is set to 'unix' ...
>
> What I did was to specify "linux" as rng (works only with patched
> sources) because then the source expects a /dev/random to be there.

I didn't think that was necessary because configure detected
a random device!

That seems to have solved it ...

> So either one patches the source (as I did) or we hope for Solaris
> /dev/random support in the official gpg sources as, by now, two
> /dev/randoms seem to exist (SUNWski ans Andreas'). But I guess Andreas

SUNWski exists only for Solaris < 7, or am I wrong?

> Meier's random device has to be examined before Werner "officially"
> suggests its use. Saying that, there's always egd ... :-)

Which Brian kindly made available now through http, as I was
never able to ftp it ...

>>>"LH" == Lars Hecking <lhecking@nmrc.ucc.ie> writes:


>> /dev/random support in the official gpg sources as, by now, two
>> /dev/randoms seem to exist (SUNWski ans Andreas'). But I guess Andreas

LH> SUNWski exists only for Solaris < 7, or am I wrong?

SUNWski does exist. According to Sun, it's only supported for Solaris
2.6 and 7. But in this case, the lack of support seems to be more like a
marketing decision because I've installed it on my Sol8 machine and it
works. The basic principle is not unlike egd so it doesn't seem to be
very OS version dependent.

Cheers,
Nils
--
Nils Ellmenreich - Fak. fuer Math./Informatik - Please use gpg - Nils @
http://www.fmi.uni-passau.de/~nils - Univ. Passau - Uni-Passau.DE