blocking entropy device, serial console?

[Bruce Evans]

On Sat, 29 May 2004, Don Bowman wrote:

> I must confess i find this kind of humourous...
> I'd just booted the system, in single user mode.
> I have just a serial console.
>
> This message popped out when i tried to run vi /etc/fstab:
> Entropy device is blocking. Dance fandango on keyboard to unblock.
>
> catch is, i'm stuck now... the vi process is blocked
> (load: 0.28  cmd: vi 167 [block] 0.00u 0.01s 0% 1256k)
> i can't ^C or anything.
> suggestions on what this might be?
> is this normal? I've never seen this before?
>
> I tried hitting keys on the serial for a while, but nothing
> happened.

Apparently entropy is only generated for local keyboards.

Even with local keyboards, it can take a lot of keys to unblock.
Copying a disk drive to /dev/null dances faster (at least for ata
drives).

Bruce