.TH SSH-RAND-HELPER 8 "April 14, 2002" ""
.SH NAME
\fBssh-rand-helper\fP
\- random number gatherer for OpenSSH
.SH SYNOPSIS
.br
\fBssh-rand-hlper\fP
[\fB\-vxXh\fP]
[\fB\-b\fP \fIbytes\fP]
.SH DESCRIPTION
\fBssh-rand-helper\fP
is a small helper program used by
\fBssh\fP(1),
\fBssh-add\fP(1),
\fBssh-agent\fP(1),
\fBssh-keygen\fP(1),
\fBssh-keyscan\fP(1)
and
\fBsshd\fP(8)
to gather random numbers of cryptographic quality if the
\fBopenssl\fP(4)
library has not been configured to provide them itself.

Normally
\fBssh-rand-helper\fP
will generate a strong random seed and provide it to the calling
program via standard output. If standard output is a tty,
\fBssh-rand-helper\fP
will instead print the seed in hexidecimal format unless told otherwise.

\fBssh-rand-helper\fP
will by default gather random numbers from the system commands listed
in
\fI/etc/ssh/ssh_prng_cmds\fP.
The output of each of the commands listed will be hashed and used to
generate a random seed for the calling program.
\fBssh-rand-helper\fP
will also store seed files in
\fI~/.ssh/prng_seed\fP
between executions.

Alternately,
\fBssh-rand-helper\fP
may be configured at build time to collect random numbers from a
EGD/PRNGd server via a unix domain or localhost tcp socket.

This program is not intended to be run by the end-user, so the few
commandline options are for debugging purposes only.
.TP
\fB\-b\fP \fIbytes\fP
Specify the number of random bytes to include in the output.
.TP
\fB\-x\fP
Output a hexidecimal instead of a binary seed.
.TP
\fB\-X\fP
Force output of a binary seed, even if standard output is a tty
.TP
\fB\-v\fP
Turn on debugging message. Multiple
\fB\-v\fP
options will increase the debugging level.
.TP
\fB\-h\fP
Display a summary of options.
.SH AUTHORS
Damien Miller <djm@mindrot.org>
.SH SEE ALSO
\fBssh\fP(1),
\fBssh-add\fP(1),
\fBssh-keygen\fP(1),
\fBsshd\fP(8)