Are you logged in remotely or via the console ? 

You might want to check the status of the rnd device usind 'rndcrl -l' and 
'rndctl -n' - the net devices arent enabled as entropy sources by default 
and on a remote server with little disc activity this results in very 
little entropy being gathered - if this is the case try enabling entropy
collection on the net devices using 'rndctl -ce -t net'

Paul

On Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 06:13:36PM -0500, Emre Yildirim wrote:
> hi,
> 
> I posted this question a few weeks ago, regarding GnuPG not being able to generate keys
> due to lack of random data.  I still don't know what to do.  Here is what I get:
> 
> [after entering in Name, Email, Comment etc]
> 
> Change (N)ame, (C)omment, (E)mail or (O)kay/(Q)uit? O
> You need a Passphrase to protect your secret key.
> 
> We need to generate a lot of random bytes. It is a good idea to perform
> some other action (type on the keyboard, move the mouse, utilize the
> disks) during the prime generation; this gives the random number
> generator a better chance to gain enough entropy.
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.+++++++++++++++++++++++++...+++++
> +++++++++++++++.+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.+++++>
> +++++..+++++...>+++++...............................+++++
> 
> Not enough random bytes available.  Please do some other work to give
> the OS a chance to collect more entropy! (Need 300 more bytes)
> 
> 
> 
> After that, I just type random letters and numbers, and do other stuff, like start
> randomprograms.  But it doesn't seem to help at all, it just hangs there.  First I thought
> it wasgenerating the key, but after running 'top' I found out that it's doing nothing
> (processorat 0.00% and idle).  I also tried unchecking the load-extension rnd* comments in the
> ~/.gnupg/options file.  Nothing seems to work.
> 
> I'm sure that at least one person here runs gpg.  Is anyone having the same problems?
> What's the solution to this?
> 
> (I'm running NetBSD 1.5T, I have both, /dev/random and /dev/urandom, that both spit
> out random data.  This was installed from the latest pkgsrc, gnupg version 1.0.6)
> 
> Thanks for any help
> 
>