* Cory Nelson <phrosty at gmail.com> [2008-07-18 07:27:42]:

> On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 7:02 AM, Florent Daigni?re
> <nextgens at freenetproject.org> wrote:
> > * Jano <alejandro at mosteo.com> [2008-07-18 15:59:38]:
> >
> >> Florent Daigni?re wrote:
> >>
> >> > * Jano <alejandro at mosteo.com> [2008-07-18
> >> > 13:21:33]:
> >> >
> >> >> Since the last version #1153, my node takes a very long time to start 
> >> >> (half
> >> >> an hour or more). Trying to load the homepage gives a page saying that
> >> >> "Freenet is starting up", and below:
> >> >>
> >> >> Not enough entropy is available!
> >> >> There isn't enough entropy available on your system... Freenet won't 
> >> >> start
> >> >> until it can gather enough.
> >> >>
> >> >> This node runs in an unattended box, so any entropy sources will be
> >> >> non-human. I have read somewhere that /dev/random is slow to refill and 
> >> >> can
> >> >> be exhausted easily if used too much. Could this be part of the problem?
> >> >>
> >> >
> >> > This is the problem.
> >> >
> >> > Launch a "find / >/dev/null" from a different shell and that should help
> >> > the OS to refill the entropy pool.
> >>
> >> I'm going to try this, it's been two hours now with the node stuck waiting.
> >>
> >> ***
> >>
> >> It worked. I know /dev/urandom is less secure, is there a likely 
> >> possibility of
> >> attacks if urandom is used instead?
> >
> > Before #1153 we were using urandom... and yes that was insecure.
> >
> > I might introduce some code to generate hard-drive accesses in 1154.
> 
> You might want to check out HAVEGE: http://www.irisa.fr/caps/projects/hipsor/
> 
> It takes advantage of branch mispredictions to give high quality
> randomness.  The algorithm is quite simple.

Are you aware that freenet is written in java? :) We can't rely on
architecture-specific problems to generate the entropy we need.

We are already using a cryptographically secure PRNG (Yarrow); The
node stalls because it can't gather the entropy needed to seed it.

NextGen$
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