The J7F4 mini-ITX
motherboard that I got for
my home server has a VIA C7 processor. One of the feature of the
processor is the PadLock Security
Engine
with hardware RNG. This is especially useful on a server since they
are limited in entropy sources. Linux kernel has support for the VIA
hardware RNG in the via_rng module.
Next, install the rng-utils package with the rngd daemon. It
reads entropy from the hardware RNG, /dev/hwrng, and feeds it to the
kernel entropy pool for /dev/random.
Unfortunately, the package is missing an init.d script to start the
service (see redhat bug
215371. The
/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit actually has a commented-out line to start
rngd. Download the script from the bug and put it in
/etc/init.d/rngd. Add the service, chkconfig --add rngd, and start it, service rngd start.