When is put in all the required data and push "setup GnuPG" i have to wait very long about 1 min and then i get:

Failed to create secret key :

:

password
Repeat passphrase:

We need to generate a lot of random bytes. It is a good idea to perform
some other action (type on the keyboard, move the mouse, utilize the
disks) during the prime generation; this gives the random number
generator a better chance to gain enough entropy.
++++++++++.++++++++++++++++++++.+++++++++++++++.++++++++++.++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++..+++++++++ ++++++.+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++>+++++.........> +++++.....................................................................................< +++++.........>+++++<+++++...+++++

Not enough random bytes available. Please do some other work to give
the OS a chance to collect more entropy! (Need 273 more bytes)


any idea how to fix that?

Hey Martin,

Yes, this is a GPG error, but I can see how it would be confusing, since there's not a lot of ways to "do more work" in a web page. Basically, what's happening here is that GPG is trying to find some "randomness", which computers are very bad at providing on their own. So you have to do some stuff that is random.

If a box is in service as a web and mail server and receiving lots of requests, this error would never appear. But since yours doesn't appear to be very heavily used yet and probably isn't a desktop machine where you can just move the mouse around, you'll have to fake it. You could kick off an updatedb to generate some disk usage, fire up a kernel compile or some other kind of software build, or do a recursive grep for something, while key generation is happening.

Here's two example commands that'll probably generate enough randomness to make gpg happy:

Code:

# updatedb # grep -R foobar /

Post edited by: Joe, at: 2007/08/14 17:49