pollen(1)

📦 version 4.22, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 pollen — bestie edition 💖

okay so. this is the pollen(1) manual page, live from the pollen server section, and honestly? she's an icon. an Entropy-as-a-Service web server. no cap. let's get into it 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

pollen — an Entropy-as-a-Service web server 💅

like, she serves entropy. as a service. the way that she just hands out randomness over the internet? main character energy fr fr.

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

pollen [OPTION]...

that's it. that's the whole vibe. you give her options, she gives you chaos (the good kind). ✨

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

  • -http-port — the HTTP port she listens on and serves cleartext responses from 👀. want it gone? set it to "" and she'll stop. default is "80".
  • -https-port — the HTTPS port where she listens and serves encrypted, TLS responses 🔐. same deal: "" disables it. default is "443".
  • -device — the device she uses for reading and writing random data 🌈. default is /dev/urandom.
  • -bytes — the size, in bytes, that she transmits and receives each time with peers or neighbors listening in the pool 🦋. default is 64.
  • -cert — the path to the TLS certificate 📜. default is /etc/pollen/cert.pem.
  • -key — the path to the TLS key 🔑. default is /etc/pollen/key.pem.

💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

so pollen is an Entropy-as-a-Service web server, and what that means is she provides random seeds over a TLS encrypted connection. that's the whole job. and she ate. 💅

every single request gets serviced over HTTPS, using the key at /etc/pollen/key.pem and the cert at /etc/pollen/cert.pem. not some requests. all of them. periodt.

and if you're the system administrator 👑, there are some configuration options waiting for you in /etc/default/pollen. go look. she left them there for you. 🎁

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

(yeah she references herself, that's just her being confident, let her live 😌)

🌟 AUTHOR 🌟

this manpage and the utility were written by Dustin Kirkland <kirkland@ubuntu.com> for Ubuntu systems (but like, anyone else can use them too, she's not gatekeeping 🫶).

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. slay.

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. 📚

and that's the whole page, bestie. pollen from the pollen server section, 07 February 2013, version vibes included. go generate some entropy responsibly. mwah 💋 ✨🌈💖
📦 where this page comes from