Policy Server and AdminUI :: Linux : /dev/random

Products

• CA Single Sign On Secure Proxy Server (SiteMinder)
• CA Single Sign On SOA Security Manager (SiteMinder)
• CA Single Sign-On

Issue/Introduction

Description:

I have configured my Linux system in order to get a sym link between /dev/random and /dev/urandom as suggested by the documentation.
But, I noticed that this link is available until the next machine reboot. Then, the link is lost. How could I get this link always set, even if the OS reboots ?
This problem is annoying because when I do not have the link set, I get error messages as :

"Error: username and password do not match"

when accessing the AdminUI and the Policy Server is very slow at startup.

Solution:

You have to configure the UDEV service on the Linux machine. The UDEV service is responsible to create the /dev repository at boot time. Here is a sample of the configuration of UDEV :

70-disable-random-entropy-estimation.rules

# /etc/udev/rules.d/70-disable-random-entropy-estimation.rules
# Disables /dev/random entropy estimation (it's mostly snake oil anyway).
#
# udevd will warn that the kernel-provided name 'random' and NAME= 'eerandom'
# disagree.  You can ignore this warning.
# Use /dev/eerandom instead of /dev/random for the entropy-estimating RNG.
KERNEL=="random", NAME="eerandom"
# Remove any existing /dev/random, then create symlink /dev/random pointing to
# /dev/urandom
KERNEL=="urandom", PROGRAM+="/bin/rm -f /dev/random", SYMLINK+="random"

rf.: ( http://superuser.com/questions/309840/how-can-i-point-dev-random-to-dev-urandom )

You will get more information on the UDEV service from:

# man udev

or

http://www.reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html

among the others.

Environment

Release: SOASMU99000-12.5-SOA Security Manager-Upgrade
Component: