[Python-Dev] BDFL ruling request: should we block forever waiting for high-quality random bits?

[Theodore Ts'o]

On Sun, Jun 12, 2016 at 06:53:54PM -0700, Nathaniel Smith wrote:
> 
> Speaking of full-stack perspectives, would it affect your decision if
> Debian Stretch were made robust against blocking /dev/urandom on
> AWS/GCE? Because I think we could find lots of people who would be
> overjoyed to fix Stretch before the next merge window even opens
> (AFAICT the quick fix is literally a 1 line patch), if that allowed
> the blocking /dev/urandom patches to go in upstream...

Alas, it's not just Debian.  Apparently it breaks the boot on Openwrt
as well as Ubuntu Quantal:

	https://lkml.org/lkml/2016/6/13/48
	https://lkml.org/lkml/2016/5/31/599

(Yay for an automated test infrastructure that fires off as soon as
you push to an externally visible git repository.  :-)

I haven't investigated to see exactly *why* it's blowing up on these
userspace setups, but it's a great reminder for why changing an
established interface is something that has to be done very carefully
indeed.

	     	       	    	   - Ted