---
name: "nessus-mkrand"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "nessusd"
version: "2.2.10-3"
release: "Debian 5.0 (Lenny)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/nessus-mkrand"
---

# nessus-mkrand(1)

Creates a file with random bytes

## NAME

nessus-mkrand - Creates a file with random bytes

## SYNOPSIS

**nessus-mkrand \[***filename* **\[***entropy***\] \]**

## DESCRIPTION

The  **Nessus Security Scanner** protects the communication between the client and the server by using SSL.  To work securely, the OpenSSL library needs a suitable amount of random bytes.  On most system, it uses EGD or  */dev/random* (or  */dev/urandom*).

On systems which have none of these, Nessus will provide OpenSSL with a file  full of random bytes generated by  **nessus-mkrand** which is stored by default under  *$HOME/.rnd*. **nessus-mkcert** and **nessus-mkcert-client** require user input as a random seed.

By default,  **nessus-mkrand** produces a file stored under  *$HOME/.rnd* containing 1024 bytes of entropy.

## SEE ALSO

[**nessus-adduser**(8)](/nessus-adduser/8.md), [**nessusd**(8)](/nessusd/8.md), [**nessus**(1)](/nessus/1.md), [**nessus-mkcert**(8)](/nessus-mkcert/8.md), [**nessus-mkcert-client**(1)](/nessus-mkcert-client/1.md), **[openssl(1)](/openssl/1.md)**

## MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE NESSUS PROJECT

The canonical places where you will find more information  about the Nessus project are:

http://www.nessus.org/ ⟨⟩ (Official site)\
 http://cvs.nessus.org/ ⟨⟩ (Developers site)

## AUTHOR

**nessus-mkrand** was written by Michel Arboi \<arboi@algoriel.fr\>.