Webmaster in a Nutshell, Third Edition

Name

SSLRandomSeed

Synopsis

                     SSLRandomSeed 
                     context source [bytes]

[server config]

Specifies the source of seeding for the pseudorandom number generator used by OpenSSL. context determines the seeding source either at startup or when a new SSL connection is made (connect).

The source specifies the utility that provides the random seed. builtin indicates that mod_ssl’s internal seeding utility is used. It is a simple utility, but doesn’t provide a strong seeding source. Other seeding sources are: file:/path/file, which uses the contents of a file to determine the seeding. This usually points to a device file for a random generator like /dev/random. exec:/path/prog points to an executable source for seeding. The source is the stream of bytes sent to stdout. For both file and executable sources, an optional argument specifying a number of bytes indicates that only the first bytes of the source (file or output) will be used. Without this argument, the complete source is used.