Re: openSSL Key generation

When I tested to see if the trick below worked as a pipe, I got the following:
dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1024 count=1024 |/usr/bin/openssl genrsa -rand - 1024 > server.key 0 semi-random bytes loaded
Generating RSA private key, 1024 bit long modulus ....++++++

................++++++

(The output from DD is ignored, and the pipe write fails once the pipe fills up and openssl dies).

I get the same result if I use Non_existant_file instead of '='

The point here is that if the random byte input file doesn't exist (or is un-openable), openssl silently ignores the error snd continues with no input data. This is not (for me at least) the expected response. I would, at the very least, expect an error message and, perhaps a non-zero return code. Preferrably, it should refuse to generate the key until the obvious error is corrected.

Michal Luczak (warf) wrote:

> If you really want to use /dev/urandom then try something like this:

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