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Josh Smeaton
Asked: 2013-08-09 18:01:40 +0800 CST

Is there a way to monitor /dev/random?

  • 772

We're investigating some JDBC issues, and one of the possible problems is /dev/random being exhausted. The workaround is to switch the JVM to using /dev/urandom, but I wan't to try and determine whether or not the /dev/random is being exhausted.

Is there a way to check if the entropy pool is being exhausted? I've gone hunting for nagios plugins and general bash commands, but I've turned up nothing.

linux

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Sure! Ask /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail.

    • 17

  2. as read someplace else... each new process get entropy from /dev/random

    a simple way to avoid stealing the pool is a program, such as:

    #!/usr/bin/env python

import time

while True:
    with open('/proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail', 'r') as f:
        print(f.read().rstrip())
    time.sleep(1.0)
    • 2