Arch Linux

mistertransistor

Member

Registered: 2011-11-07

Posts: 15

[SOLVED] Arch build problem with pacman keyring, insufficient entropy

I'm trying to build a basic Arch system on a Dell GX240. I start from archlinux-2011.08.19-core-i686.iso and follow the process. I eventually get a bootable hard disk, but it's not too useful as pacman won't work because its libraries are not present. So I do "pacman -Syu --force"  - the force being needed recently to avoid existing file errors aborting the install, see
http://www.archlinux.org/news/filesyste … -required/

This updates stuff for a while and then says "Run pacman-key --init" and drops into gpg. When I type in the requested command I get

Not enough random bytes available.  Please do some other work to give
the OS a chance to collect more entropy! (Need 211 more bytes)

I'm then in limbo - nothing I try does anything except using ctrl-C to get out of gpg (?). Then what? I try pacman -Syu --force again, which does lots of stuff but ends up with errors about /dev/sda3 being unmounted and udev not existing etc. I end up with a system that won't even boot.

How can I get more entropy? I searched the Web and found articles that suggest copying large files to /dev/null. However this is a bare system with nothing much on it. Can I do something prior to the pacman -Syu --force that will avoid this error?
thanks
Andrew

Last edited by mistertransistor (2012-02-14 22:23:15)

jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,424

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Arch build problem with pacman keyring, insufficient entropy

Please choose more descriptive titles for your threads - imagine googling your current issue and seeing this title come up...

To generate some entropy, change to another TTY and do something that creates some I/O - write lines to a file, etc...

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mistertransistor

Member

Registered: 2011-11-07

Posts: 15

Re: [SOLVED] Arch build problem with pacman keyring, insufficient entropy

OK - I had not understood that it was waiting for me to 'create some entropy'. The Web suggests various complex options even using entropy generators but I just used alt-rightarrow to open another TTY, mounted a cdrom of images, and cp'd a load to /dev/null. That worked.

Andrew
PS I've updated my titles.

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: [SOLVED] Arch build problem with pacman keyring, insufficient entropy

OK - I had not understood that it was waiting for me to 'create some entropy'. The Web suggests various complex options even using entropy generators

Have you read https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pa … entropy.3F ?
I wouldn't call these suggestions complex.