Hello list It all started with that I noticed apache was starting and stopping very slow. I then started debugging it, first with -X for debug in apache bin but I didnt get any output from that so I tryed with the very usefull strace util. I noticed it got an hang when trying to read from /dev/random. Why apache whould read from this file when I shut it down I dont know. I then tried to cat /dev/random and found nothing! /dev/random was empty... I waited one minute and tried catting it again and found about 10 random chars.. I then went off to google and found out that /dev/random can run empty if the kernel random entropy pool is empty, this is logic, I also found out that read access to /dev/random is locked as long as the entropy pool is empty, also logic. But the question is why is it soo slow? I have never had problem with this on any Linux/*nix servers before. And if I manage to empty /dev/random on another server it usually dont take more than a few seconds to fill it up again. Do any of you have any tips to make this process to fill up /dev/random goo any faster? Is it "bad" to make a symlink to /dev/urandom insteed? In front thanks Lars - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-admin" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
