Q: I was trying to help out a friend who was in a dilemma he had already resolved. While trying to scp to a host, he got the error message "PRNG is not SEEDED". Only the super-user root was able to scp, but he wanted drill down to the root of the problem. After all, who wants to execute scp as root, right?
He was able to successfully scp on other machines as himself, but on this particular machine he was only able to do it as the super-user, root. It is worthy to note here that ssh works, but scp does not.
A: When trying to run scp and you get an error message "PRNG is not SEEDED", you probably have an issue with the /dev/random and/or /dev/urandom devices on your system. These devices are created by default during system installation.
Check that proper permissions are present on random numbers generators. The correct permissions should be "others" must have "read" access to these devices. Below are the permissions on a working system:
# ls -l /dev/random /dev/urandom crw-r--r-- 1 root system 39, 0 Jun 22 10:48 /dev/random crw-r--r-- 1 root system 39, 1 Jun 22 10:48 /dev/urandom
To corrent, change them like below:
# chmod o+r /dev/random /dev/urandom
Now stop and start the SSH daemon again, and retry if scp works.
# stopsrc -s sshd # startsrc -s sshd
For unknown reasons, there are times when the files /dev/random and /dev/urandom are missing from the system. If this is the case, you will need to create them. Execute the following commands:
# stopsrc -s sshd # mknod /dev/random c 39 0 # mknod /dev/urandom c 39 1 # randomctl -l # ls -ald /dev/random /dev/urandom # startsrc -s sshd
So far problems with s-commands I have encountered are related to the random generator character devices. I have encountered similar problems while trying to blank a forgotten root password and setting a new one on a Solaris machine.
You may further drill down on the cause of the problem by using strace or truss, whichever is applicable on your *nix system.
