Need entropy ? Simtec Entropy Key + openSUSE to the rescue

A while ago, I saw the Simtec Entropy Key website, a small, relative unexpensive  USB device that produces random numbers and then fills the kernel entropy pool.

It sparked my geeky curiosity so I bought one, it arrived today, but it didn't had "out of the box" support in openSUSE, so I worked integrating its software to make it rock and roll :)

I will show you how to make it work in your installation, just FYI ;-)

• Setup the needed repositories and packages as instructed here
• Start the entropy key daemon (rcekeyd start) and plug your device
• Run ekeyctl list , that will help you to determine if the device is recognized
• Run ekey-rekey where serial is your device serial number and master-key is the secret string you find in a sealed letter inside the box.
• if everything goes right, you will now be able to $ watch -n1 cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail and see how it fills with fresh random numbers.
• ohh, and do not attach your printed master-key to your monitor with a sticker please :-) 

Out of the box support for this hardware will ship with  SUSE products in the near future.

HTH. ;-)

Using Chromium with Thunderbird 3 in Linux

To make Thunderbird 3 to use chromium as web browser execute:

find ~/.gconf  -type f -name "%gconf.xml" -exec sed -i -e "s@/usr/bin/firefox@/usr/bin/chromium@g" {} +

Too bad there is no Chrome Mail Client to ditch Thunderbird too.

Joining the Czech packagers team

I have joined the Czech packagers team this week, Im looking forward to work with you folks :-D

Old blog died

Bad news, my old blog database wasn't in the "backup list" so, it is gone for good.

From now on, We will get in touch using blogger.