How can I permantly increase the entropy_avail level?

Solution 1:

I have the same issue. I found haveged works the best. Simply run

sudo apt-get install haveged -y

and you are done. It will start itself and add entries to start on boot.

Solution 2:

This article here seems to have found a package that will essentially feed the random number generator with the output of the random number generator... essentially generating as much random as you need at the cost of have 'less random' numbers.

The reason that ls -R / works is because the primary source of random bits in linux is hardware noise. ls'ing the whole filesystem generates a lot of that.

The instructions from the other article are reproduced here:

sudo apt-get install rng-tools
sudo vim /etc/default/rng-tools
#Set the value: HRNGDEVICE=/dev/urandom
sudo /etc/init.d/rng-tools start