pollinate1
An entropy-as-a-service client
Usage
pollinate [{-c | --curl-opts
CURL_OPTS}]
[{-d | --device
DEVICE}]
[{-i | --insecure}]
[{-n | --no-challenge}]
[{-r | --reseed}]
[{-s | --server
SERVER1
[{-s | --server
SERVER2}] ...}]
Overview
pollinate is an entropy as a service client. It will fetch a random seed from one or more remote servers, and feed those into a (pseudo) random number generator. This is often useful in cloud and virtual machine environments with limited sources of entropy.
Options
-b|--binary-
rather than producing hex text sha512sum(1) output, convert each two hex digits into a byte of binary data
-c|--curl-optsCURL_OPTS-
options to pass through to curl(1)
-d|--deviceDEVICE-
device to seed (default is /dev/urandom); note, you can use - to print to stdout
-n|--no-challenge-
disable the challenge/response portion of the protocol; this enables a compatibility mode to speak to any entropy server, like random.org or news.google.com
-i|--insecure-
ignore SSL/TLS certificate errors (use of this option is highly discouraged)
-p|--poolSERVER-
remote pollen(8) server pool to interact with; this option can be specified multiple times to interact with multiple servers in a pool
-r|--reseed-
by default,
pollinatetechnically only needs to run successfully once ever; this option should be used if someone wants run more than once, and re-seed the PRNG
-s|--serverSERVER-
remote pollen(8) server to interact with; if this option is used, the pool is ignored, and only a single server is used
-
--strict -
handle network errors strictly and exit non-zero for any network error encountered, otherwise default is to warn
-t|--testing-
test communications with the pollen(8) server; note that this will NOT actually seed your PRNG, but only verify that the local client can communicate with the remote servers; note that this option forces DEVICE to stdout
-q|--quiet-
silence any log messages
-w|--waitWAIT-
time in seconds you're willing to wait for a response from the server, uses timeout(1)
-
--print-user-agent -
Print the user-agent that is used and exit immediately.
Releases
Unchanged in 4 releases since Debian 10 (Buster).