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 <serial> <master-key> where serial is your device serial number and master-key is the secret string you find in a sealed letter inside the box.</master-key></serial>
  • 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. ;-)