[OTR-users] Gaim Crashing when Generating Key on FC4

[Ian Goldberg]

On Mon, Jul 17, 2006 at 04:52:23PM -0400, Emilio Recio wrote:
> I compiled Gaim-1.5 from scratch and installed it (/usr/local). Then
> compiled libotr, and gaim-otr, and installed it to /usr/local. Gaim-Otr
> v3.0 works great with FC5. I do an ldd on gaim-otr.so and libotr.so and
> all the libraries are found in their correct location.
> 
> I ran gaim with strace and I noticed that when it was asked to "generate
> key" it opened /dev/random instead of /dev/urandom, and kept timing out.
> I couldn't do anything else with the application, it froze even the
> "repainting" of the application when moving the window around. I don't
> know what it opened for the FC5 version (because it all just worked).
> 
> Has anyone had the same experience?

Unless the packager for FC5 did something funny, it should also be
opening /dev/random.  libgcrypt recommends using GCRY_VERY_STRONG_RANDOM
(i.e. /dev/random) for long-term keys, and GCRY_STRONG_RANDOM (i.e.
/dev/urandom) for session keys.  If your machine is freezing up, it
means that for some reason, /dev/random hasn't accumulated enough
entropy, and is blocking the app (i.e. gaim) until it does.  So things
like jiggling the mouse, disk accesses, etc. should make it go at some
point.  However, it's been noted before that some implementations of
virtual private servers have a broken /dev/random that never returns
anything.  Is your FC4 maybe running on one of those?

   - Ian