Running examples a few times and it computer hanged

[UrsaEli]

Hi Ryan,
I ran the examples, it seems to hang at the entropy part.

Thank you.

[Elfrania]

I face the same issue. I tried to abort and I get this:

in secret_int_to_points
coefficients = random_polynomial(point_threshold-1, secret_int, prime)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/secretsharing/polynomials.py", line 34, in random_polynomial
random_coeff = randint(0, upper_bound-1)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/secretsharing/entropy.py", line 41, in randint
byte_from_entropy = get_entropy(numbytes_of_entropy)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/secretsharing/entropy.py", line 23, in get_entropy
return dev_random_entropy(numbytes)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/secretsharing/entropy.py", line 14, in dev_random_entropy
return open("/dev/random", "rb").read(numbytes)

[shea256]

Hey @UrsaEli @Elfrania the reason for this is it is using /dev/random (which blocks if there's not enough entropy in the entropy pool) instead of /dev/urandom (which doesn't block). I'm going to change it to use the latter and then I'll let you know.

[shea256]

There was a controversy in the crypto community in the past over which was better, but it's become pretty clear that /dev/urandom uses a better model. I'll make this fix and we'll get you up and running in no time.

[shea256]

Actually this shouldn't be happening. @Elfrania I believe you might have an older version of this library. Can you let me know what the version number is? And if you do pip install secretsharing --upgrade is the problem fixed?

[Elfrania]

Same issue:

I just run this. The first time it may work, but if I run it a few times, it will hang.

from secretsharing import SecretSharer

total_number_of_shares = 3;
shares = SecretSharer.split_secret("c4bbcb1fbec99d65bf59d85c8cb62ee2db963f0fe106f483d9afa73bd4e39a8a", 2, total_number_of_shares);

print len(shares); # total_number_of_shares
print "Splitting into shares: ", shares;

[Elfrania]

I retested the code, it's slow but it's completing now.

Thank you, Ryan.

[shea256]

@Elfrania can you please type pip freeze in your command line and then let me know what the version number is for your copy of the secretsharing library?

Thanks!

[Elfrania]

secretsharing==0.2.6