SYNOPSIS
- ipsec ranbits [--quick] [--continuous] [--bytes] nbits
DESCRIPTION
Ranbits
The --quick option produces quick-and-dirty random bits: instead of using the high-quality random bits from /dev/random, which may take some time to supply the necessary bits if nbits is large, ranbits uses /dev/urandom, which yields prompt results but lower-quality randomness.
The --continuous option uses datatot(3) x output format, like h but without the underscores.
The --bytes option causes nbits to be interpreted as a byte count rather than a bit count.
FILES
/dev/random, /dev/urandom
HISTORY
Written for the Linux FreeS/WAN project <m[blue]http://www.freeswan.orgm[]> by Henry Spencer.
BUGS
There is an internal limit on nbits, currently 20000.
Without --quick, ranbits's run time is difficult to predict. A request for a large number of bits, at a time when the system's entropy pool is low on randomness, may take quite a while to satisfy.
Though not a bug of ranbits, the direct use of /dev/hw_random, the Linux hardware random number generator is not supported because it can produce very non-random data. To properly use /dev/hw_random, the rngd daemon should be used to read from /dev/hw_random and write to /dev/random, while performing a FIPS test on the hardware random read. No changes to Openswan are required for this support - just a running rngd.