[onerng talk] [SOLVED] Using OneRNG

[Jim Cheetham]

Sounds like you're getting on well, albeit a little slowly.

OneRNG presents itself as a serial device, as you've found; on Linux
/dev/ttyACM0 is often what the OS chooses to call it.

By default, there's no connection between this serial device and the Linux
OS's internal random number generators (/dev/random, /dev/urandom). That's
what the software package for OneRNG tries to provide - but there have been
a bunch of changes in recent distributions that stop it from working
properly (python has been upgraded, systemd has taken control of more
things, the entire internals of /dev/random have been re-written). We have
a new version of the helper software in development according to Paul,
it'll come when he's ready :-)

So with a current Linux and the current state of the software, just
plugging it in is unlikely to do much. However, you can still talk directly
to the device over the serial interface and collect data for use directly
with your own software. The "Generic" instructions provided from the
Moonbase Otago site http://www.moonbaseotago.com/onerng/#Generic are still
accurate, and will lead you to connect to the device and issue
instructions, and eventually run 'rngd' manually to link up our device with
/dev/random.

Some of the comments about extended demand from /dev/random causing the
OneRNG LEDs to light are probably inaccurate now, as I don't think
/dev/random re-seeds itself following usage in the same way that it used
to. Instead I suspect the better approach is to just cram data down the
pipeline periodically regardless of usage - but again I defer to Paul. I'm
guessing some documentation rewriting will be needed.

As for Windows itself, we're still not clear on how the OS might accept
external entropy - it's likely that only hardware services Microsoft want
to support (e.g. TPM devices and CPU services) will ever have a way in.
However, if you have a specialist use for entropy you can talk directly to
the OneRNG over the serial interface and process its data with your own
software.

-jim


On Mon, Oct 26, 2020 at 9:02 AM onerng <onerng at mcgugan.uk> wrote:

> OneRNG <http://lists.onerng.info>
>
> [image: Photo of onerng]
> <http://lists.onerng.info/p/7A83gEZENHJGfebMTUrB2Z>
> *[SOLVED] Using OneRNG*
> <http://lists.onerng.info/r/topic/1YFT2svcwD1KidEUb62lHB>
> by *onerng* <http://lists.onerng.info/p/7A83gEZENHJGfebMTUrB2Z>
> in *OneRNG Talk* <http://lists.onerng.info/groups/onerng-talk>
> ------------------------------
> Thanks for help.
> Now I have a dev/ttyACM0, the onerng package installed but cat /dev/random
> >/dev/null never dims the led. Have tried all the things in the moonbase
> doc but nothing changes.
> cat and dd on /dev/ttyACM0 give no output.
> ------------------------------
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