I am using a StackScript to deply Fedora 11 to my Linode. On random first boots the system will hang on "Generating SSH2 RSA host key". I have deployed the system several times tonight (this has been going on for a while) and it worked fine a few times and hung a few times. If I hit enter it will fail and go on. This occurs before the StackScript runs, so doesn't appear to be anything wrong with my scripting.

Anybody have any ideas about why this is happening and what to do to fix it?

Hmm... Depleted /dev/random on the hardware host?

My biggest suggestion is that you should be using Slackware anyway, but then that's my biggest suggestion for everything...

Sorry, but your suggestion isn't much of a suggestion because it doesn't take any factor into consideration. Perhaps the software I am wanting to run doesn't run on Slackware. Or maybe my client only wants to use Fedora. Or maybe I only want to use Fedora. Suggesting I use a different OS simply because I have a problem (which may or may not be OS related) is not useful and not appreciated.

+1

If they are using /dev/random to generate the host keys (as they should), it can take a long time on a freshly booted VPS to accumulate enough entropy. Are you waiting a long time before you give up and call it hung?

For what it's worth, each kernel (and thus Linode) has its own entropy pool, distinct from the host; /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail has the number of bytes available. It's usually not a big number.

At one point I waited several hours. When I finally gave up I went through the process again and it worked fine.

And this is why Slackware has such a bad name.

.llort