pollinate(1) pollinate pollinate(1)
NAME
pollinate - an Entropy-as-a-Service client
SYNOPSIS
pollinate [-c|--curl-opts CURL_OPTS] [-d|--device DEVICE] [-i|--inse-
cure] [-n|--no-challenge] [-r|--reseed] [-s|--server SERVER1
[-s|--server SERVER2] ...]
DESCRIPTION
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 ma-
chine 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-opts CURL_OPTS
options to pass through to curl(1)
-d|--device DEVICE
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 en-
ables 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|--pool SERVER
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, pollinate technically 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|--server SERVER
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|--wait WAIT
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.
SEE ALSO
pollen(8), timeout(1)
AUTHOR
This manpage and the utility were written by Dustin Kirkland <kirk-
land@ubuntu.com> for Ubuntu systems (but may be used by others). Per-
mission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document un-
der the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 3 published by
the Free Software Foundation.
On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License
can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL, or on the web at
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt.
pollinate 28 November 2012 pollinate(1)
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