Linux "pollinate" Command Line Options and Examples
an Entropy-as-a-Service client
pollinate is an entropy as a service client. It will fetch a random seed from one or more remote servers, and feed those into a (pseudo) random number generator. This is often useful in cloud and virtual machine envi‐ ronments with limited sources of entropy.
Usage:
pollinate [-c|--curl-opts CURL_OPTS] [-d|--device DEVICE] [-i|--insecure] [-n|--no-challenge] [-r|--reseed]
[-s|--server SERVER1 [-s|--server SERVER2] ...]
Command Line Options:
-b|--binary
rather than producing hex text sha512sum(1) output, convert each two hex digits into a byte of binarydata
pollinate -b|--binary ...
-c|--curl-opts
options to pass through to curl(1)
pollinate -c|--curl-opts ...
-d|--device
device to seed (default is /dev/urandom); note, you can use - to print to stdout
pollinate -d|--device ...
-n|--no-challenge
disable the challenge/response portion of the protocol; this enables a compatibility mode to speak toany entropy server, like random.org or news.google.com
pollinate -n|--no-challenge ...
-i|--insecure
ignore SSL/TLS certificate errors (use of this option is highly discouraged)
pollinate -i|--insecure ...
-p|--pool
remote pollen(8) server pool to interact with; this option can be specified multiple times to interactwith multiple servers in a pool
pollinate -p|--pool ...
-r|--reseed
by default, pollinate technically only needs to run successfully once ever; this option should be usedif someone wants run more than once, and re-seed the PRNG
pollinate -r|--reseed ...
-s|--server
remote pollen(8) server to interact with; if this option is used, the pool is ignored, and only a sin‐gle server is used
pollinate -s|--server ...
--strict
handle network errors strictly and exit non-zero for any network error encountered, otherwise defaultis to warn
pollinate --strict ...
-t|--testing
test communications with the pollen(8) server; note that this will NOT actually seed your PRNG, butonly verify that the local client can communicate with the remote servers; note that this option forcesDEVICE to stdout
pollinate -t|--testing ...
-q|--quiet
silence any log messages
pollinate -q|--quiet ...
-w|--wait
time in seconds you're willing to wait for a response from the server, uses timeout(1)
pollinate -w|--wait ...
--print-user-agent
Print the user-agent that is used and exit immediately.
pollinate --print-user-agent ...