Re: Stretch => Buster: Entropy during boot
Hi Jesper,
On Fri, Oct 16, 2020 at 12:28:13PM +0200, Jesper Dybdal wrote:
> I run a few Stretch systems on old processors that do not support the RDRAND
> instruction.
>
> Can I simply install "haveged" on the Stretch systems *before* the upgrade
> to Buster to avoid problems during the upgrade?
In July last year I experimented with boot times on a virtual
machine while:
- running normally
- disallowing RDRAND for early entropy
- disallowing RDRAND entirely
The normal boot (RDRAND) took ~1 second; the "no RDRAND at all" boot
took ~49 seconds. Given that a virtual machine has no real hardware
to provide sources of entropy I would consider this to be near to a
worst case for SSH. If you have other boot-time services that
require entropy then they may take significantly longer.
So if it's mainly SSH you're worried about, I don't think this will
be the end of the world for you to just do it and see what happens.
https://strugglers.net/~andy/blog/2019/07/11/experiments-with-rdrand-and-entropykey/
Cheers,
Andy
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