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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | ENVIRONMENT | SEE ALSO | NOTES | COLOPHON |
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SYSTEMD-....SERVICE(8) systemd-random-seed.serviceSYSTEMD-....SERVICE(8)
systemd-random-seed.service, systemd-random-seed - Load and save
the OS system random seed at boot and shutdown
systemd-random-seed.service
/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-random-seed
systemd-random-seed.service is a service that loads an on-disk
random seed into the kernel entropy pool during boot and saves it
at shutdown. See random(4) for details. By default, no entropy is
credited when the random seed is written into the kernel entropy
pool, but this may be changed with $SYSTEMD_RANDOM_SEED_CREDIT,
see below. On disk the random seed is stored in
/var/lib/systemd/random-seed.
Note that this service runs relatively late during the early boot
phase, i.e. generally after the initrd phase has finished and the
/var/ file system has been mounted. Many system services require
entropy much earlier than this — this service is hence of limited
use for complex system. It is recommended to use a boot loader
that can pass an initial random seed to the kernel to ensure that
entropy is available from earliest boot on, for example
systemd-boot(7), with its bootctl random-seed functionality.
When loading the random seed from disk, the file is immediately
updated with a new seed retrieved from the kernel, in order to
ensure no two boots operate with the same random seed. This new
seed is retrieved synchronously from the kernel, which means the
service will not complete start-up until the random pool is fully
initialized. On entropy-starved systems this may take a while.
This functionality is intended to be used as synchronization
point for ordering services that require an initialized entropy
pool to function securely (i.e. services that access /dev/urandom
without any further precautions).
Care should be taken when creating OS images that are replicated
to multiple systems: if the random seed file is included
unmodified each system will initialize its entropy pool with the
same data, and thus — if otherwise entropy-starved — generate the
same or at least guessable random seed streams. As a safety
precaution crediting entropy is thus disabled by default. It is
recommended to remove the random seed from OS images intended for
replication on multiple systems, in which case it is safe to
enable entropy crediting, see below. Also see Safely Building
Images[1].
See Random Seeds[2] for further information.
$SYSTEMD_RANDOM_SEED_CREDIT
By default, systemd-random-seed.service does not credit any
entropy when loading the random seed. With this option this
behaviour may be changed: it either takes a boolean parameter
or the special string "force". Defaults to false, in which
case no entropy is credited. If true, entropy is credited if
the random seed file and system state pass various
superficial concisistency checks. If set to "force" entropy
is credited, regardless of these checks, as long as the
random seed file exists.
Added in version 243.
systemd(1), random(4), systemd-boot(7), systemd-stub(7),
bootctl(4), systemd-boot-random-seed.service(8)
1. Safely Building Images
https://systemd.io/BUILDING_IMAGES
2. Random Seeds
https://systemd.io/RANDOM_SEEDS
This page is part of the systemd (systemd system and service
manager) project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd⟩. If you have
a bug report for this manual page, see
⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/#bugreports⟩.
This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/systemd/systemd.git⟩ on 2024-06-14. (At that
time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2024-06-13.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
[email protected]
systemd 257~devel SYSTEMD-....SERVICE(8)
Pages that refer to this page: systemd.directives(7), systemd.index(7), systemd-boot-random-seed.service(8)
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HTML rendering created 2024-06-26 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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