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[bug#29542] rng-tools: New upstream location, new releases
From: |
Marius Bakke |
Subject: |
[bug#29542] rng-tools: New upstream location, new releases |
Date: |
Wed, 06 Dec 2017 00:11:36 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Notmuch/0.25.2 (https://notmuchmail.org) Emacs/25.3.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) |
Leo Famulari <address@hidden> writes:
> On Sun, Dec 03, 2017 at 08:49:09PM +0100, Tobias Geerinckx-Rice wrote:
>> Hm. Looks legit, no?
>
> I think so but one can never be sure :)
>
>> I took a look at the recent commit[0] that added most of these:
>>
>> “NIST has a randomness beacon available here:
>> https://www.nist.gov/programs-projects/nist-randomness-beacon
>>
>> It generates entropy at a rate of 512 bits per minute. Its sent in
>> cleartext over the internet, making it unsuitable for cryptographic
>> function, it is useful in the generation of entropy for things like
>> monte carlo tests or other uses where shared pools of entropy might be
>> useful. As such, lets add the NIST beacon as an entropy source, but
>> disable it by default so users have to know to keep it enabled.”
>>
>> Neat! :-)
>>
>> I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that it adds 166.3 MiB to the
>> closure, though. On the one hand, that 's a 240% increase in closure
>> size for a feature that's ‘disabled by default’ (but read on).
>>
>> On the other hand, this is a leaf package only installed by users who
>> want it, and I don't like removing features without better reason. I
>> also had to add ‘--without-nistbeacon’ to #:configure-flags so it's not
>> *that* disabled by default...
>>
>> I'm in mild favour of keeping it, but suggest we add a comment above
>> those three inputs to point those hacking the recipe in the right direction.
>
> Thanks for digging in here.
>
> I started looking at this package because I'm interested in improving
> the situation with the Linux RNG for virtualized GuixSD. Rng-tool's rngd
> seems to have a part to play here. I think it would be better to keep the
> closure small since it could potentially end up deployed widely.
>
> How about we disable the NIST beacon support for now, and add
> 'rng-tools-minimal' later if the feature is requested?
That sounds good to me. I prefer my entropy sources lightweight ;)
FWIW if you control the hypervisor, you can send something along the
lines of:
qemu -device virtio-rng-pci,bus=pci.0,addr=0x1e,max-bytes=1024,period=1000
to feed the guest with entropy from the host through virtio, up to 1kB/s.
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