Re: /dev/random blocked

[Ken Snider <ken snider datawire net>]

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Jos Vos wrote:

| Are there others having the problem that a process (on a busy system)
| in rare occasions blocks on reading /dev/random?  I have now seen this
| twice, one time on RHL 9 and one time on RHEL 3 and in both cases I
| tried several things but finally had to reboot to solve the problem.
|
| I see with strace that a processes reading /dev/random blocks
| (not sure if it was /dev/urandom in the other case), also when I start
| a new process, the device just doesn't provide a single byte anymore.

/dev/random *WILL* block if there isn't enough entropy available to generate
random data. For an unblocking /dev/random, use /dev/urandom, which will use
"pseudo-random" data when system entropy is low.

- --
Ken Snider
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