Why no PRNG not seeded error

[Wayne Johnson]

I'm using ssl (openssl-0.9.7m) as part of AXIS C++.  I just spent a week trying 
to figure out why I couldn't use https (via openssl) to connect on only some of 
our systems.  After rebuilding our copy of OpenSSL for debug and trapping 
through it, I found that ssleay_rand_bytes() was setting the 
RAND_R_PRNG_NOT_SEEDED error, then ssleay_rand_pseudo_bytes() (who called 
ssleay_rand_bytes was clearing it off the error stack and all I was getting on 
my SSL_Connect() was a return code of -1, and an error string of 
"00000000:lib(0):func(0):reason(0)".  It would really be nice if we could get 
the right error.
 
What am I missing here?  
 
The code basically does:
    int ret = SSL_connect( m_sslHandle);
 
    //   1  is fine
    //   0  is "not successful but was shut down controlled"
    //  <0  is "handshake was not successful, because a fatal error occurred"
    if( ret <= 0)
    {
...
    switch( ret)
    {
        case SSL_ERROR_NONE:        // this is not an error
        case SSL_ERROR_ZERO_RETURN:    // no more data
            return;
...
        case SSL_ERROR_SSL:
        // A failure in the SSL library occurred, usually a protocol error.  The
        // OpenSSL error queue contains more information on the error.
        default: 
        // openssl/ssl.h says "look at error stack/return value/errno"
        {
            // A failure in the SSL library occurred, usually a protocol error. 
 The
            // OpenSSL error queue contains more information on the error.
            m_Last Error = "OpenSSL error is " + std::string(ret) + "Error 
stack:\n";
            while ((sslerror = ERR_get_error()) != 0)
            {
              ERR_error_string(sslerror , error_buffer);
              m_Last Error += std::string(error_buffer) + "\n";
            }
        }
    }
 
Thanks for the help.

Wayne Johnson 
Senior Software Engineer 
MQSoftware, Inc. 
1660 S Highway 100 
Minneapolis, MN 55416 
(952) 345-8628