Re: gpg key generation

[Chad Miller <cmiller@surfsouth.com>]

On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 10:18:11PM +1100, Mark Hepburn wrote:
> Has anyone else had any trouble with key generation for gpg?
> 
> I'm using a reva imac; I've tried different sizes and types of keys, and do lots of typing, mouse moving, try to give the hard disk stuff to do, etc, but it still complains about not having enough entropy and needing another 2-300 bytes (and then appears to hang).

This is a known issue.  PowerPCs are built too well, and don't gain
disorder as fast as, say, i386 does.

If this doesn't do it

	find / >/tmp/out & rm /tmp/out; lynx http://web.slashdot.org/

then take a baseball bat to it to add lots of entropy.  Maybe too much.

Really, keyboard input usually does it.  I made my key on a PowerBook,
but the keyboard isn't USB, there.  Try lots of network activity and a
few finds redirected to temporary files, but I don't know if network and 
disk IO touch the /dev/random code. 

						- chad

--
Chad Miller <cmiller@surfsouth.com>   URL: http://web.chad.org/   (GPG)
"Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced".
First corollary to Clarke's Third Law (Jargon File, v4.2.0, 'magic')