Collecting entropy?

[Rémi Guyomarch]

On Fri, Mar 31, 2000 at 02:06:19PM +0000, Darren Cook wrote:
> At 22:51 00/03/30 -0600, Marius Strom wrote:
> >BSD machine:
> >in /etc/defaults/rc.conf, set rand_irqs="<some irq's that are actually
> >used>"
> >
> >It defaults to keyboard controller, IIRC, which is not helpful on a
> >headless terminal.
> >
> >I use the IRQ of my disk controller, then run a find / creates wonderful
> >entropy. =]
> 
> Thanks (and to L. Sassaman).
> 
> Looking at that file I see:
> rand_irqs="NO"          # Stir the entropy pool (like "5 11" or NO).
> 
> Any suggestions what to do here (assuming the ISP is unwilling to change
> that file and reboot their server)? Is it reasonable to create the keys on
> my linux machine then upload them?
> 
> Darren

hmm, just my Euro 0.02:

On FreeBSD you don't have to reboot your machine to change the IRQs used. 
Just do, as root :
	rndcontrol -s 15
	rndcontrol -s 14
to add the IDE/ATAPI IRQs if they are used. Replace with your SCSI card IRQ
if you have SCSI instead. I don't know if it's really secure to add a network
card IRQ there.

On OpenBSD, you simply can't add or remove entropy sources. At least it
doesn't seems obvious to me while I was browsing man pages on
www.openbsd.org.