Entropy gathering in ia64 kernel

[Jim Harritt]

I'm having trouble with dnssec-keygen on an HP rx2600 running debian on the 2.4.20-mckinley-smp kernel.  Unlike other debian platforms, dnssec-keygen stalls reading /dev/random (or /dev/urandom for that matter).  If I monitor /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail, I see the entropy pool drop immeadiately from 4096 to 0 and stay there and the command never completes.  This does not happen on other ia32 systems. 

I'm building bind from source, bind-9.2.2, using the following config:
  ./configure --with-openssl --enable-threads --enable-ipv6

I'm using the follwing to generate keys:
  dnssec-keygen -a RSA -b 512 -n ZONE my.domain

Another funny thing.  If I point to a large file (-r /vmlinuz) for randomness, the command completes and keys generated.

Any idea why /dev/random lack the entropy to supply dnssec-keygen?

-- Jim Harritt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> HP -MSDD SDI CCS Colaboration Services