Unfortunately this is a headless server that wants to spin up and down a large number of VMs in short sequence as part of a QA process. Each wants to generate some key pairs. So banging on the keyboard or such isn't an option.
Sent from my iPad. > On Mar 4, 2015, at 01:58, Frank Mehnert <[email protected]> wrote: > > I think the same you would do on real hardware. When I create crypt keys > on real hardware on Linux I'm asked to perform some actions like pressing > random keys very fast. I guess a busy (virtual) hard disk would add more > entropy, same with a busy network interface. Such device activities should > trigger a lot of interrupts which can be used by the guest OS kernel to > generate more entropy. > > Frank > >> On Wednesday 04 March 2015 00:10:09 you wrote: >> So in a nutshell, what's the best I can do at this point without code >> changes or waiting for the next release? I'm attempting to generate some >> gpg keys etc and it's taking a loooong time.... >> >> Sent from my iPad. >> >>> On Mar 3, 2015, at 23:55, Frank Mehnert <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> Johannes, >>> >>>> On Tuesday 03 March 2015 20:31:06 Johannes Ernst wrote: >>>> What’s the best source of randomness for a Linux guest? >>>> >>>> I’ve been reading about virtio-rng [1]. Can it be made to work with >>>> VirtualBox? >>> >>> VirtualBox does not support virtio-rng but I guess it's not very >>> difficult to add this feature. I'm more worried about support for >>> hosts/guests different than Linux. >>> >>> The source for entropy in a virtual machine is in principle the >>> same like on bare metal, for instance device interrupts and their >>> distribution over time, several clocks and the time stamp counter. >>> VirtualBox tries very hard (and this will be even improved in the >>> next major release) to provide the guest sensible values when >>> reading the time stamp counter using the RDTSC machine instruction. >>> >>> But I admit that the sources for entropy within a virtual machine >>> are limited in comparison to bare metal, mainly because a guest >>> is usually configured to have only access to virtual devices being >>> essential for doing it's job. >>> >>> Frank > > -- > Dr.-Ing. Frank Mehnert | Software Development Director, VirtualBox > ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG | Werkstr. 24 | 71384 Weinstadt, Germany > > Hauptverwaltung: Riesstr. 25, D-80992 München > Registergericht: Amtsgericht München, HRA 95603 > Geschäftsführer: Jürgen Kunz > > Komplementärin: ORACLE Deutschland Verwaltung B.V. > Hertogswetering 163/167, 3543 AS Utrecht, Niederlande > Handelsregister der Handelskammer Midden-Niederlande, Nr. 30143697 > Geschäftsführer: Alexander van der Ven, Astrid Kepper, Val Maher _______________________________________________ vbox-dev mailing list [email protected] https://www.virtualbox.org/mailman/listinfo/vbox-dev
