ssh connection wait forever

[Matt Johnston]

On Fri, Mar 18, 2005 at 05:46:56AM -0800, Gavinux wrote:
> I compiled dropbear for my embedded system
> (linux-2.4.27, glibc-2.2.5, busybox-1.00). I boot my
> system from NFS server, then, I use ssh from Redhat
> 7.3 or putty from Win2k to connect to my embedded
> system, and the ssh client (or putty) wait forever,
> nothing displayed, until I press some keys on my
> embedded system's keyboard. and then the cilent
> prompts username and password.
> But if I boot my embedded system from local disk,
> everything is fine.
> Anything I didn't setup correctly?
> P.S. The file system and kernel are the same in local
> disk and NFS server.

It's probably still the same problem about lack of random
data (see
http://lists.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au/pipermail/dropbear/2005q1/000151.html
).

The solutions are to make sure that there's enough entropy
and use urandom (if you don't make sure, you'll end up with
an insecure system), or perhaps look at patches for the
kernel to get random input from network card timings etc.

Since you're trusting the NFS link anyway, you could
probably arrange something with getting entropy from the
Redhat box - though _only_ if you know that you can trust
that path.

Matt