/dev/random & SSH

[Steven E. Protter]

I think its a very informative and useful paper and I may try it on my sandbox system.

With regards to commentary about HP being slow to adopt certain technologies and Linux being faster....

HP really isn't that slow but there is a reason that the most reliable form of Unix is HP-UX and not any Linux distribution. HP's caution is one of them.

I will add that I'm quite annoyed at how slow key transfer is with ssh, but I'm willing to tolerate it to maintain my support agreement.

SEP

[Tim Maletic]

Ok, Chris, it looks like you're right. Tusc shows that HP's ssh tries to read /dev/urandom every time it's run, regardless of whether or not the device exists.

Looks like openssh always looks at /dev/urandom, no matter how it is compiled. I couldn't figure this out from the sources, but I rebuilt openssh to use the ssh-rand-helper and it still tries to read /dev/urandom.

My speculations about how openssl fits into this may be a red herring. I don't know.

I'd like a definitive answer, or at least a diagnotic procedure to determine which entropy source your ssh is using. I guess it's back to more heavy grepping in the openssh sources...

[Chris Wong]

Hi,

Why did you "rm -r .ssh"?

The only file that can be removed when adding the /dev/random is the prng_seed file.

"The prng_seed files can be removed (this
includes the one in root???s .ssh directory) since the new device driver (accessed via /dev/random and /dev/urandom) does not need this seed file to create a random
number. "

Hope this helps.

- Chris

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

OK, the original thread is rather old, but I stumbled onto this:

--8<---
Subject: /dev/random for HP-UX 11.00 0.0.3 - A /dev/random device for HP-UX 11.00 (DLKM).
From: hpux11-random@freshmeat.net
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 10:00:11 +0000 (UTC)
Newsgroups: fm.announce

/dev/random for HP-UX 11.00 0.0.3
by Jos Visser (http://freshmeat.net/~josv/)
Monday, December 15th 2003 02:00

About:
/dev/random for HP-UX 11.00 provides a device driver that generates
high-quality random numbers.

Changes:
This version resolves a race condition, which could lead to a kernel panic.

Release focus: Major bugfixes
License: GNU General Public License (GPL)
Project URL: http://freshmeat.net/projects/hpux11-random/

Homepage: http://freshmeat.net/redir/hpux11-random/43684/url_homepage/hpux11-random
Tar/GZ: http://freshmeat.net/redir/hpux11-random/43684/url_tgz/hpux11-random-current.tar.gz
Tar/BZ2: http://freshmeat.net/redir/hpux11-random/43684/url_bz2/hpux11-random-0.0.3.tar.gz
-->8---

And I wondered if people alsready used/tested it, and what HP's view about it is.

Home URL: http://www.josvisser.nl/hpux11-random/

And it WORKS!

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn

[Volker Borowski]

Back to top !

Anyone already tested the Implementation Merijn had mentioned ?
At least the website shows a lot of accesses on 15./16. of Dec last year after Merijn's post (show graph) on
http://freshmeat.net/projects/hpux11-random/?topic_id=144%2C44

So did anyone of you 60 guys who actually clicked the link, did a download and is willing to share some experience ?

Thanks a lot
Volker

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

I did myself, and it works.

The project it will be used for however, cannot be changed to use it for some time because of regulations (it would have to be tested again in full to get certified).

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn [ who is very satisfied with the way this solution is in tegrating in existing infrastructure ]