Greg Troxel wrote:
What can I do? How do I create a lot of randomness?
I have had similar problems (not gdb, but other things that read /dev/random), especially on domUs. I run 'du / > /dev/null' and that generates enough disk interrupts to get randomness.
I already tried that and it didn't do any good - although I let it run about 10 times. What eventually solved my problem was a reboot. Didn't know that caused chaos. :-)
Perhaps we need randomd(8) that watches the entropy level and when too low reads files from the filesystem to bring it back.
I've looked at the algorithm and although it looks fine to me unless needed for real high-security stuff, there are people who would argue that it may at some time spit out predictable numbers, or at lease isn't as random as some other algorithms.
Wasn't there a card as a hardware random generator somewhere? :-) Regards, Chris