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.

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