[Help-gnutls] Re: About entropy gathering

[Simon Josefsson]

devel <dev001 at pas-world.com> writes:

> Hello,
> When a machine do not have entropy for make random number gnutls wait
> for complete gathering.
> In some case computer can not collect entropy, bad configuration,no
> hw..., And this seems to be a problem.
>
> My question is this. Have GNUTLS any time limit to wait for entropy?

Hi!  No, there is no such time limit.  GnuTLS uses libgcrypt for
entropy gathering, and there are two purposes for which entropy is
needed: when generating RSA/DSA keys, or D-H parameters, and when
generating session keying material.  If I remember correctly, the
former uses /dev/random plus some libgcrypt internal stuff, the latter
uses /dev/urandom plus some internal stuff.  Thus, GnuTLS should never
hang waiting for entropy generation during session-specific stuff.

We've had some reports in the past that says GnuTLS (or, rather,
libgcrypt) hangs waiting for entropy even during sessions, but nobody
have been able to track things down or reproduce it, if I understand
correctly.  I think some of those reports, related to the Debian exim
packages, were caused by re-generating D-H parameters in the server,
which will hang.  I think that has been fixed now, though.

My message is this: if you have problems with the system hanging
waiting for entropy, I think there is a bug somewhere (*), and you'll
need to provide more debugging information.

/Simon

(*) Well, ok, with the exception for Windows and some other platforms,
where there isn't really any good RNG and libgcrypt may take some
time.  But on a normal GNU/Linux system, there shouldn't be a problem,
or there is a bug.