---
name: "pollinate"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "pollinate"
version: "4.33-4"
release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/pollinate"
---

# pollinate(1)

an Entropy-as-a-Service client

## 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)](/sha512sum/1.md) output, convert each two hex digits into a byte of binary data

- **-c\|--curl-opts** CURL\_OPTS

  options to pass through to [**curl**(1)](/curl/1.md)

- **-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)](/timeout/1.md)

- **--print-user-agent**

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

## SEE ALSO

**pollen**(8), [**timeout**(1)](/timeout/1.md)

## 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*.