Hello,
....
Flash forward to 2017 and T'so himself wrote a patch to add a
configure option to allow RDRAND to be used early on to bootstrap
entropy. Thereafter it would not be the exclusive source of entropy.
That is what has been enabled in buster's kernel and is what is at
the heart of this discussion.
These are two different scenarios.
Granted, they are different scenarios.
But I don't ever recall the mainstream kernel in a leading distribution blocking on lack of entropy by default
at any time in T'so's career. Until now. Sure, it looks like the source permitted blocking all along (maybe).
But I never heard of this being used in a non-custom-built mainstream distro before.
Has T'so had any comments on that? Does he find it appropriate or wise?
This sub-thread appears to have people concerned about the Debian
kernel's willingness by default to use RDRAND at early boot (a patch
which T'so wrote), but using a statement made by T'so in 2013 about
something else to oppose it.
OK. You imply that their concerns were misguided (I wasn't one of them).
The evidence they chose may be untenable. But you have not addressed their actual concern.
I'm sure that your answer will include "....but the standard debian process to include this new
feature in the kernel was followed......". So everything is OK. Right?
Cheers,
Andy
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