[solved] Pacman upgrade says "not enough random bytes."

pottzie · 2012-01-20 03:36:32

Here's what I got when pacman upgraded:

gpg: /etc/pacman.d/gnupg/trustdb.gpg: trustdb created
gpg: no ultimately trusted keys found
gpg: Generating pacman keychain master key...

Not enough random bytes available. Please do some other work to give
the OS a chance to collect more entropy! (Need 280 more bytes)
...........+++++
........+++++
gpg: key 0690A807 marked as ultimately trusted
gpg: Done
==> Updating trust database...
gpg: 3 marginal(s) needed, 1 complete(s) needed, PGP trust model
gpg: depth: 0 valid: 1 signed: 0 trust: 0-, 0q, 0n, 0m, 0f, 1u

Is this what's supposed to happen, and am I OK to go ahead and run pacman -Syu?

Last edited by pottzie (2012-01-20 04:11:19)

ewaller · 2012-01-20 03:51:38

Everything is fine. Entropy is a measure of the disorder of things. In the generation of random numbers, entropy is good. For the heat death of the universe, entropy is bad.

To create really random numbers, do things with your computer that will generate random results. Examples: time between keystrokes typed by a human, time to get a block of data from the Internet, time for a printer to print a page of data, ...

Your computer knows how to gather entropy, just use it for other things while your are waiting. If everything your machine is doing is deterministic, the entropy is low.

Do some browsing and the key generation will finish sooner.

pottzie · 2012-01-20 04:10:07

Thanks. Just ran -Syu, and all seemed to work as it should.
Solved. Thanks again.

/dev/zero · 2012-01-20 04:26:00

Note you'll often see this requirement for entropy in contexts where strong encryption or digital signatures are required.

Eg, work through some tutorials on how to use GnuPG to generate RSA key pairs, or (iirc) how to do passwordless ssh, and you'll again encounter this need to generate entropy.

Last edited by /dev/zero (2012-01-20 04:26:20)

yoko · 2012-01-23 14:08:27

I have a headless machine for which I have no idea how to generate entropy for the key init. Anyone know how I might work that out?

ewaller · 2012-01-23 14:16:07

ssh into it and list some directories, do some maintenance, update your pacman repositories, ....

ultramancool · 2012-01-24 22:53:51

Why the hell is this necessary? Less-than-random keys can be used just fine for this purpose, it's ridiculous. The most it should need should be ~32 bytes to seed fortuna or yarrow with a 256 bit key.

Last edited by ultramancool (2012-01-24 22:56:05)

Awebb · 2012-01-24 23:05:54

So you traveled all the way from 2008 to tell us this?

Arch Linux

#1 2012-01-20 03:36:32

[solved] Pacman upgrade says "not enough random bytes."

#2 2012-01-20 03:51:38

Re: [solved] Pacman upgrade says "not enough random bytes."

#3 2012-01-20 04:10:07

Re: [solved] Pacman upgrade says "not enough random bytes."

#4 2012-01-20 04:26:00

Re: [solved] Pacman upgrade says "not enough random bytes."

#5 2012-01-23 14:08:27

Re: [solved] Pacman upgrade says "not enough random bytes."

#6 2012-01-23 14:16:07

Re: [solved] Pacman upgrade says "not enough random bytes."

#7 2012-01-24 22:53:51

Re: [solved] Pacman upgrade says "not enough random bytes."

#8 2012-01-24 23:05:54

Re: [solved] Pacman upgrade says "not enough random bytes."

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