Re: [uml-user] entropy hole in UML instances too

[Paolo G. <p.g...@gm...>]

On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 at 11:58 PM, Toralf Förster <tor...@gm...> wrote:
> I think, that the discussed hole is related to UML too (or at least was
> related in the past).
> IIRC when I booted a freshly created UML image for the first time - it
> hang in the boot phase for a looong time for the creation of
> public/private keys of an applciation (either apache2 or courier, but I
> do not remember).
> While this behaviour itself was good (the application still waited b/c
> /dev/random blocked I was explained) - it indicated too less entropy
> during boot of UML too, isn't it ?

Yep - entropy comes from hardware interrupts, and UML doesn't have
enough such interrupts, as far as I remember; I think interrupts might
be individually marked as usable to produce entropy. I remember that
before I stopped development, a UML driver was introduced to allow UML
to feed on the host's entropy by reading the host's /dev/random.

Not sure about the current status of all this, though.

-- 
Paolo Giarrusso - Ph.D. Student
http://www.informatik.uni-marburg.de/~pgiarrusso/