Can't gpg --gen-key

[Werner Koch]

On Thu, 23 Aug 2001 02:09:32 -0400, CO Group Support said:

> Hi.  I'm trying to do gpg --gen-key on a FreeBSD system from a remote terminal
> (telnetted in) and, when it gets to the end and tries to generate the key, it

1. Don't use telnet - it is ridiculous to send the passphrase in clear

2. If you need to do this on a remote machine, use SSH [1].

3. You should enable the random device on FreeBSD, I don't know how to
   do it, but with a proper confiuration the machine can collect
   enough entropy even without someone hitting on the keyboard.
   It should help to start some background jobs like "find / -type f
   xargs -n 100 grep jhdgfjhf"

  Werner


[1] Entering passphrases over an SSH channel is not as secure as
believed, it may be better to pipe the passphrase to the remote
machine. See the recent Song/Wagner/Tian paper - it is in the news.

-- 
Werner Koch        Omnis enim res, quae dando non deficit, dum habetur
g10 Code GmbH      et non datur, nondum habetur, quomodo habenda est.
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