This isn't a cyrus-imapd problem, and in fact I don't even believe it is a
cyrus-sasl problem, but I'm hoping someone on this list has come across a
similar issue and has found a reasonable resolution.
I am working with RedHat 7.1 with a 2.4.2 kernel, and I have run into a
problem with saslpasswd. When using saslpasswd to set a user's password (or
create a new user), it hangs indefinietly. Checking logs, I found that it
was hanging while trying to set the PLAIN password. Digging through some
archives, I found references to problems with /dev/random, and tried the
following;
% cat /dev/random
Sure enough, /dev/random is blocked. From what I have gathered from yet
more archives, /dev/random is seeded by the kernel with random input from
things like the keyboard and the mouse, and when the entropy pool runs too
low, the device blocks as a security precaution. Fair enough. The problem
is, this machine is in a data center, so it has no keyboard and no mouse, so
I believe it is not getting enough random input to keep the entropy pool
sufficiently seeded.
I have "fixed" the problem by linking /dev/random to /dev/urandom, but I
know this is not a reasonable long term fix (not that good in the short
term, either). Has anyone come across a reasonable way to keep /dev/random
seeded on a machine with no keyboard or mouse, or with a good alternative to
/dev/random?
Thanks for the help - John
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
