Actually, the first is a better solution in general.  Even PV devices can
generate entropy more slowly; unless you have a very specific need for
concrete amounts of raw entropy, /dev/urandom is much to be preferred.  The
/dev/random device can block anytime the rate of entropy consumption
exceeds the rate of production.

(However, /dev/random *should* be used if you’re going to seed other pRNG
based key generators.  Doing that is generally discouraged if you have a
reasonable /dev/urandom implementation though, since /dev/urandom allows
for new entropy to be added to the pool over time, whereas other pRNGs
generally never increase their entropy.)


- Garrett

On Thu, Mar 23, 2017 at 9:23 AM, Michele Codutti via smartos-discuss <
[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi all. Recently I noticed that the tomcat web server had log startup
> times when it runs inside a KVM linux machine.
> It seems that the problem resides in the fact that the /dev/random produce
> entropy very slowly.
> I have found two solutions of this problem:
>    Configure tomcat to use /dev/urandom
> 2. Use the virtio-rng paravirtual device (if it is implemented in the KVM
> port in SmartOS). <http://rhelblog.redhat.com/
> 2015/03/09/red-hat-enterprise-linux-virtual-machines-access-
> to-random-numbers-made-easy/>
> The first solution is quick and dirty.
> The second seems more robust but I need to configure a KVM machine with
> that paravirtual device.
> I had not found any documentation about that topic in the (SmartOS) wiki.
> Googling was not useful.
> Some one can give me at least some directions?
> Thanks in advance
> 
> Michele
> 



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