NAME

       pollinate - an Entropy-as-a-Service client

SYNOPSIS

       pollinate   [-c|--curl-opts  CURL_OPTS]  [-d|--device  DEVICE]  [-i|--insecure]  [-n|--no-
       challenge] [-r|--reseed] [-s|--server SERVER1 [-s|--server SERVER2] ...]

DESCRIPTION

       pollinate is an entropy as a service client.  It will fetch a random seed from one or more
       remote  servers,  and  feed  those into a (pseudo) random number generator.  This is often
       useful in cloud and virtual machine environments with limited sources of entropy.

OPTIONS

       -b|--binary
              rather than producing hex text sha512sum(1) output, convert  each  two  hex  digits
              into a byte of binary data

       -c|--curl-opts CURL_OPTS
              options to pass through to curl(1)

       -d|--device DEVICE
              device to seed (default is /dev/urandom); note, you can use - to print to stdout

       -n|--no-challenge
              disable   the   challenge/response   portion   of  the  protocol;  this  enables  a
              compatibility  mode  to  speak  to  any  entropy   server,   like   random.org   or
              news.google.com

       -i|--insecure
              ignore SSL/TLS certificate errors (use of this option is highly discouraged)

       -p|--pool SERVER
              remote  pollen(8)  server  pool  to  interact  with;  this  option can be specified
              multiple times to interact with multiple servers in a pool

       -r|--reseed
              by default, pollinate technically only needs to run successfully  once  ever;  this
              option should be used if someone wants run more than once, and re-seed the PRNG

       -s|--server SERVER
              remote  pollen(8)  server  to  interact  with;  if this option is used, the pool is
              ignored, and only a single server is used

       --strict
              handle network errors strictly and exit non-zero for any network error encountered,
              otherwise default is to warn

       -t|--testing
              test  communications  with  the  pollen(8) server; note that this will NOT actually
              seed your PRNG, but only verify that the local  client  can  communicate  with  the
              remote servers; note that this option forces DEVICE to stdout

       -q|--quiet
              silence any log messages

       -w|--wait WAIT
              time  in  seconds  you're  willing  to  wait  for  a response from the server, uses
              timeout(1)

          --print-user-agent
              Print the user-agent that is used and exit immediately.

SEE ALSO

       pollen(8), timeout(1)

AUTHOR

       This manpage and the utility were written by  Dustin  Kirkland  <kirkland@ubuntu.com>  for
       Ubuntu  systems  (but  may  be used by others).  Permission is granted to copy, distribute
       and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License,  Version  3
       published by the Free Software Foundation.

       On  Debian  systems,  the  complete text of the GNU General Public License can be found in
       /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL, or on the web at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt.