Rngd running when shouldn't?

1

Hi,
Just noticed from web admin menu Status > Entropy that Random Number Generator Daemon is shown as running on my firewalls that don’t have CPU hardware support for it.
Logged into CLI to verify not just a web interface problem, and confirmed that rngd process running.
Appears in 2.25 CU 158 and 159 (testing). Not sure if in 157 as have upgraded all my units.
Regards

2

Hi,

looking at the corresponding initscript, rngd gets started either way:

                if [ -e /dev/hwrngtty ]; then
                        HWRNG=/dev/hwrngtty
                else
                        HWRNG=/dev/hwrng
                fi
                boot_mesg "Starting Random Number Generator Daemon..."
                loadproc /usr/sbin/rngd -r $HWRNG --quiet

You should see one of these files on your IPFire machine:

[root@maverick ~]# file /dev/hwrngtty
/dev/hwrngtty: cannot open `/dev/hwrngtty' (No such file or directory)
[root@maverick ~]# file /dev/hwrng
/dev/hwrng: character special (10/183)

The following commits are related to the status quo:

To cut it short: We cannot reliably determine whether an IPFire machine comes with a true HWRNG or a PRNG, so we just start rngd either way and let it deal with whatever comes. It cannot hurt. :slight_smile:

Thanks, and best regards,
Peter Müller

2 Likes
3

That didn’t used to be the case.
Thanks for clarifying change in operation.
:slightly_smiling_face: