generating keys & entropy

[Tyler Retzlaff]

I'm having difficulty with keys not wanting to generate or taking a very 
long time to generate.  I suspect this is due to the source of entropy 
used to generate the key not being very active.  I notice I can "force" 
the process along by causing some extra network/cpu activity on the host 
I'm generating the key.  Is there a way to avoid having to do this?  I 
find it to be quite inconvenient since I am often generating keys for 
testing purposes.

Any suggestions welcome, thanks.