.TH NESSUS-MKRAND 1 "September 2001" "The Nessus Project" "User Manuals"
.SH NAME
nessus-mkrand \- Creates a file with random bytes
.sp
.SH SYNOPSIS
.BI nessus-mkrand\ [\| filename\  [\| entropy \|]\ ]

.SH DESCRIPTION

.LP
The 
.B Nessus Security Scanner
protects the communication between the client and the server by using SSL. 
To work securely, the OpenSSL library needs a suitable amount of random bytes. 
On most system, it uses EGD or 
.I /dev/random 
(or 
.IR /dev/urandom ). 

On systems which have none of these, Nessus will provide OpenSSL with a file 
full of random bytes generated by 
.B nessus-mkrand 
which is stored by default under 
.IR $HOME/.rnd .
.B nessus-mkcert
and
.B nessus-mkcert-client
require user input as a random seed.

By default, 
.B nessus-mkrand 
produces a file stored under 
.I $HOME/.rnd 
containing 1024 bytes of entropy.



.SH SEE ALSO

.BR nessus-adduser (8),\  nessusd (8),\  nessus (1),\  nessus-mkcert (8),
.BR nessus-mkcert-client (1),\  openssl(1)

.SH MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE NESSUS PROJECT
The canonical places where you will find more information 
about the Nessus project are: 

.RS
.UR
http://www.nessus.org/
.UE
(Official site)
.br
.UR
http://cvs.nessus.org/
.UE
(Developers site)
.RE
   

.SH AUTHOR

.B nessus-mkrand
was written by Michel Arboi <arboi@algoriel.fr>.