A Lenovo Thinkpad T420 with an Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2520M CPU @ 2.50GHz, 8GB of RAM and an SSD. It's running Ubuntu 10.04, GnuPG 2.0.14, and a 3.2.0 Linux kernel.
The laptop was relatively idle when the test was being run.
It's worth noting that when you do a --gen-key it does output the message:
"We need to generate a lot of random bytes. It is a good idea to perform some other action (type on the keyboard, move the mouse, utilise the disks) during the prime generation; this gives the random number generator a better chance to gain enough entropy."
I can't imagine it would state that if "5 seconds" was anything like normal. Perhaps you have some sort of additional source of entropy which you don't know about.
The laptop was relatively idle when the test was being run.
It's worth noting that when you do a --gen-key it does output the message:
"We need to generate a lot of random bytes. It is a good idea to perform some other action (type on the keyboard, move the mouse, utilise the disks) during the prime generation; this gives the random number generator a better chance to gain enough entropy."
I can't imagine it would state that if "5 seconds" was anything like normal. Perhaps you have some sort of additional source of entropy which you don't know about.