script failure & random seed file

[David Shaw]

On Wed, May 19, 2004 at 04:50:31PM -0500, seidls at schneider.com wrote:
> Previous Email Reply -
>    It looks like you are using the program prngd to generate randomness,
>    but prngd isn't running.  GnuPG needs a source of entropy, whether it
>    is native to the OS, prngd, egd, or otherwise.  It won't run with no
>    entropy source at all.
> 
>    David
> 
> Dave,
> I have a couple more questions for you.  How do we change from prngd to
> /dev/random?  Does this require a complete rebuild of GNUpg?

It depends on how GnuPG was built.  It's possible to build a gpg
binary that has support for all random gatherers, but there is no way
for me to tell how your gpg binary was built.

> Also, a random_seed file was generated at compile time and placed into the
> .gnupg directory.  This is normally the source of entropy for GNUpg,
> correct?

No.  The random_seed file is generated at run time, and contains a
seed to initialize the random pool for the next run.

David