ssl error "PRNG not seeded"

[Geoffrey Talvola]

Jeremy Hylton [mailto:jeremy at zope.com] wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-04-10 at 11:13, Geoffrey Talvola wrote:
> > sslerror: (1, 'error:24064064:random number
generator:SSLEAY_RAND_BYTES:PRNG
> > not seeded')
> 
> > Is this likely to be a problem in the Python SSL implementation or an
> > OpenSSL problem?
> 
> The error quoted about is generated in OpenSSL.  The Python SSL code
> just wraps the error message in a Python exception and propagates it.
> 

Right, I've figured out that much.  What I'm stumped on is why this would
only fail sporadically.  I'd expect it to either always complain about the
unseeded PRNG, or never.

I'm looking in the Python SSL code to see if it explicitly seeds the PRNG,
and I can't find any code that does.  So I guess OpenSSL automatically seeds
itself somehow, but some condition caused that to fail.  Anyhow, it does
clearly look like the problem is in OpenSSL, as you suggested.

- Geoff