Apache2 hangs with ‘Digest: generating secret for digest authentication’

I’m running Apache2+SSL inside a libvirtd (kvm) Virtual Machine.

After enabling SSL and trying to add another SSL site, apache should refuse to restart and the following error would show up in /var/log/apache2.log

Digest: generating secret for digest authentication

After doing some research, it turns out that the VM did not have enough entropy to generate much of anything. Increasing this is easy, but may not be completely secure.

# cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail
139

# apt-get install rng-tools

# rngd -r /dev/urandom -o /dev/random

# cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail
2220

After running rngd, the entropy will increase at a gradual rate.

If you want this to survive a reboot, you’ll need to put it in a startup script.

Recover from accidental mkfs using fsck

Recently I accidentally ran mkfs.ext3 on the wrong RAID1 array.

As soon as I realized what had happened, I shut power off from the PC.

Booting to a live CD, I ran

mdadm –assemble /dev/md0 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1

fsck -y /dev/md0

I was able to then mount the drive

mkdir /media/md0

mount /dev/md0 /media/md0

ls /media/md0/lost+found

And the majority of my files were saved.

Check to see if your filesystem is ext2 or ext3

mount | grep md0

If it’s ext2, convert it to ext3

umount /media/md0

tune2fs -j /dev/md0

WARNING: If you choose to run fsck manually (without -y), choosing “n” to Clear? and “y” to Fix? will cause you to lose that file.