Node stops with 'Cannot open /dev/urandom' error

Question

This error:

Cannot open /dev/urandom

stopped a node in its tracks today. This is the first time I have ever seen this message. I was fiddling with the node's config earlier and ended up resetting it to default. Now, I get this error.

Answer 1

I used this hack because of the lack of hardware rng support. The problem did never appear afterwards. I already mentioned it in the Gitlab issue linked in the other answer and copied it here for convince.

Answer 2

I haven't seen this myself before, but other people have apparently. According to that, the issue should be fixed now, but perhaps there is some useful stuff in the comments that might help you 👍

Answer 3

This issue affected a few people early on, it would crash nodes randomly. I've myself seen this at random times early but have not seen such occurrences since (due to the below fix and node updates). The recommended solution at the time is to increase the linux limits on number of files open, you can follow the solution here.

To summarize:

# check hard limit on user
ulimit -Hn

# check soft limit on user
ulimit -Sn

sudo vi /etc/security/limits.conf

Add a line of “<USERNAME>    soft nofile <limit>”