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Dear !lazyweb; anyone know of a good way to help a VPS get more entropy? I'm running out of good entropy frequently on mine.
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Have you tried using random.org?
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@evan Is that some random organisation? ;-p
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@evan Not a bad idea. Will try something with that, yes. :)
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@sandersch @psquid http://goo.gl/2IaYC damn tootin'
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Maybe a script that downloads "your" block of random bits once per day from random.org and writes to /dev/random.
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@psquid this might help https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Entropy (some of this is available only to #bitfolk customers)
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@evan Yeah, that's what I'm set on. I figure if I _need_ >200,000 extra bits of entropy a day, I've probably got bigger problems.
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@moggers87 Ooh, fancy.
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You could probably check your entropy pool every hour and "top it up" to 4096 bits as needed.
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There are two issues that get conflated, that have opposite safety consequences. First: did your VPS *ever* get enough entropy?
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"Enough" is at least 80 bits. 256 is more than enough, but since you can't be sure if it was high-quality entropy, try to add more.
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2nd issue: "running out" of entropy after initial seeding. This is bullshit, and can be solved with sudo ln -snf /dev/urandom /dev/random
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@zooko Huh. Good to know, I'll have to read up on this some more.
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Try haveged. CPU intensive but one of the better entropy-generating daemons http://identi.ca/url/67754093 !Linux
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I’ve also seen ‘egads’ recommended, but not recently.
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You may want to consider a truerand implementation as well, since it relies on nothing by the CPU and RTC: http://ur1.ca/8l5cx
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@fo0bar Ah, yeah. I remember reading about that when you originally posted it. Really nice approach to the "no stored entropy" thing. :)
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