Re: random translator

[<olafBuddenhagen@gmx.net>]

Hi,

On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 02:00:57AM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:

> /dev/u?random translators are required for e.g. proper ssh and opengpg.
> ATM hurd depends on random-egd, which poses problem since it depends on
> a module which is provided by perl, which does not have the "required"
> priority, and since perl depends on hurd too, we get a dependency loop
> which leeds to immediat configuration issues.
> 
> We've asked perl maintainers whether they could move the modules to
> perl-base to avoid the issue, but that's of course not an easy thing to
> ask.
> 
> There are couple other solutions on
> 
> https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd/translator/random.html
> 
> and notably Marcus' random translator, which does already work, and
> avoids the perl dependency completely since it's pure C. It would also
> avoid a separate daemon, which looks like a good thing to me.
> 
> The advantage of egd is that it already has some rules to gather entropy
> from e.g. vmstat, w, df, etc. But that could easily be added to Marcus'
> random translator later.
> 
> What do people think about it?

Seems a bit strange to go for a solution that apparently will require
extra effort to bring it to the same level, just to work around some
packaging issues...

I can't say though that I really care either way :-)

> -Provides: makedev, login
> -Replaces: makedev, login
> -Conflicts: makedev, login
> +Provides: makedev, login, random-egd
> +Replaces: makedev, login, random-egd
> +Conflicts: makedev, login, random-egd

I'm not an expert on this stuff -- but isn't "provides" rather odd in
this case?...

> +	if showtrans /dev/random 2> /dev/null | grep -q entropy.sock
> +	then
> +		# old random-egd translator, remove
> +		settrans -g /dev/random
> +		settrans -g /dev/urandom
> +	fi

You probably want -gf here, or perhaps -go.

-antrik-