Subject: Re: /dev/random problems 1.6_STABLE
To: Martti Kuparinen <martti.kuparinen@iki.fi>
From: Simon Burge <simonb@wasabisystems.com>
List: current-users
Date: 12/16/2002 20:25:06
Martti Kuparinen wrote:

> Hi!
> 
> Is the random number device (/dev/random) broken in 1.6_STABLE? I have
> major problems with my IMAP server, the server simply hangs and
> the users experience timeouts as the result (see below).
> 
> [ ... ]
> 
> If I manually patch cyrus-sasl-1.5.27nb3's acconfig.h and config.h.in to
> use /dev/urandom instead of /dev/random everything works fine.

If there's no entropy available, reads from /dev/random will block.
"rndctl -s" will tell you if there's no entropy available.  In general,
applications should use /dev/urandom unless they need really high
quality random numbers.

Simon.
--
Simon Burge                            <simonb@wasabisystems.com>
NetBSD Support and Service:         http://www.wasabisystems.com/