Description:
On certain Redhat Linux 5.3 systems (2.6 kernel), the policy server takes a long time to start due to a call to the random method as part of the startup.
Solution:
The policy server during the startup process calls the random method on the server.
The RedHat OS distribution provides an RNG (random number generator). Two devices are available for this: /dev/random and /dev/urandom. The /dev/random will block and wait for more entropy when the entropy level (something like the 'amount of randomness) is too low while the /dev/urandom will not block, returning immediately. Entropy is generated by various ways (keystrokes, mouse moves, disk i/o etc). Unless used really heavily, /dev/random should NOT run out of entropy.
The delay can be verified by running the below command on the affected server.
dd if=/dev/random bs=1 count=200 > /dev/null
dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1 count=200 > /dev/null
There are a couple of workarounds to address this issue: