[ale] Low entropy on vm

[mike at trausch.us (Michael B. Trausch)]

On Fri, 2015-09-18 at 11:17 -0400, Jim Kinney wrote:
> User was trying to transfer data to/from oracle on Linux. The
> connection kept dropping. The Linux system is a vm on ESXi. The
> physical host is a tad overloaded on memory not complaining about cpu
> cycles.
> By telling oracle to use /dev/urandom instead of /dev/random, the
> connection drops went away.
> Could the vm be not getting enough cpu cycles to keep entropy pool
> full or should I look somewhere else? Ideas to boost entropy
> collection rate are appreciated.
When using the QEMU/KVM stack, the solution is to have a really strong
HWRNG on the host, and pass through some of that entropy to the guests.
 I don't know if there is a way to do that on the stack that you're
asking about, though.
If you have a R? or R?2 laying around, install a barebones buildroot
with rngd, openssh, and a set of ssh keys, and use its HWRNG to feed
the VM.  The HWRNG will generate random data far faster than a typical
desktop or server will. (The /dev/random device then responds more like
the /dev/urandom one does, but with more entropy.)
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