ssh-rand-helper(8)

     NAME
          ssh-rand-helper - Random number gatherer for OpenSSH

     SYNOPSIS
          ssh-rand-hlper [-vxXh] [-b bytes]

     DESCRIPTION
          ssh-rand-helper is a small helper program used by ssh(1),
          ssh-add(1), ssh-agent(1), ssh-keygen(1), ssh-keyscan(1) and
          sshd(8) to gather random numbers of cryptographic quality if
          the openssl(4) library has not been configured to provide
          them itself.

          Normally ssh-rand-helper will generate a strong random seed
          and provide it to the calling program via standard output.
          If standard output is a tty, ssh-rand-helper will instead
          print the seed in hexidecimal format unless told otherwise.

          ssh-rand-helper will by default gather random numbers from
          the system commands listed in /etc/openssh/ssh_prng_cmds.
          The output of each of the commands listed will be hashed and
          used to generate a random seed for the calling program.
          ssh-rand-helper will also store seed files in
          ~/.ssh/prng_seed between executions.

          Alternately, ssh-rand-helper may be configured at build time
          to collect random numbers from a EGD/PRNGd server via a unix
          domain or localhost tcp socket.

          This program is not intended to be run by the end-user, so
          the few commandline options are for debugging purposes only.

          -b bytes
               Specify the number of random bytes to include in the
               output.

          -x   Output a hexidecimal instead of a binary seed.

          -X   Force output of a binary seed, even if standard output
               is a tty

          -v   Turn on debugging message. Multiple -v options will
               increase the debugging level.  -h Display a summary of
               options.

     AUTHORS
          Damien Miller <djm@mindrot.org>

     SEE ALSO
          ssh(1), ssh-add(1), ssh-keygen(1), sshd(8)