views:

582

answers:

3

Does anyone know if it's possible to setup dev/random when running the OS within a VM (VMWare in this case)?

+3  A: 

What do you mean by "setup"? /dev/random will be available in the VM, and work just fine.

Martin v. Löwis
I was using OpenSolaris in a VM (on windows) and it complained it couldn't find dev/random. However I upgraded OpenSolaris to a dev build and it seems to work. Not really sure where the problem was and how it got solved but it was.
Robert Gould
Anyways +1 for answering the question.
Robert Gould
+1  A: 

For me the question is not yet answered. I have a Ubuntu VM (VMware) and /dev/random is there, but it provides far too less bytes. E.g. if I want to generate a GPG key, gpg complains "Not enough random bytes available. Please do some other work to give the OS a chance to collect more entropy! (Need 300 more bytes)". Since it is a VM I can do what I want, GPG will just keep on waiting...

chiccodoro
try /dev/random instead of /etc/random ;)
sascha
oh, sorry, this is a typo. Of course I tried to use /dev/random, not /etc/random. Edited accordingly.
chiccodoro
Try /dev/urandom. /dev/random is limited to certain sources of entropy, AFAIK. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urandom#Linux
Andrew Ferrier
Don't use /dev/urandom for security applications! You could get some random data at random.org
Georg
Hm... Don't know how to change the random input for GPG generator... Anyway thank you for the hints. Probably posting my question as an "answer" to Robert Gould's one was not such a good idea.
chiccodoro
+1  A: 

Tis is not an answer but a workaround: When I had the same problem I generated the keys on a physical machine and copied it.

Senad Uka
Yeah that's a good band-aid until one can clear out the specifics
Robert Gould