linux-ext4 - Re: Linux 5.3-rc8

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Date:   Sun, 15 Sep 2019 00:05:24 +0200
From:   Martin Steigerwald <martin@...htvoll.de>
To:     "Ahmed S. Darwish" <darwish.07@...il.com>
Cc:     Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
        "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@....edu>,
        Andreas Dilger <adilger.kernel@...ger.ca>,
        Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>, Ray Strode <rstrode@...hat.com>,
        William Jon McCann <mccann@....edu>,
        "Alexander E. Patrakov" <patrakov@...il.com>,
        zhangjs <zachary@...shancloud.com>, linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org,
        Lennart Poettering <lennart@...ttering.net>,
        lkml <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Linux 5.3-rc8

Ahmed S. Darwish - 14.09.19, 23:11:26 CEST:
> > Yeah, the above is yet another example of completely broken garbage.
> > 
> > You can't just wait and block at boot. That is simply 100%
> > unacceptable, and always has been, exactly because that may
> > potentially mean waiting forever since you didn't do anything that
> > actually is likely to add any entropy.
> 
> ACK, the systemd commit which introduced that code also does:
> 
>    => 26ded5570994 (random-seed: rework systemd-random-seed.service..)
> [...]
>     --- a/units/systemd-random-seed.service.in
>     +++ b/units/systemd-random-seed.service.in
>     @@ -22,4 +22,9 @@ Type=oneshot
>     RemainAfterExit=yes
>     ExecStart=@...tlibexecdir@...stemd-random-seed load
>     ExecStop=@...tlibexecdir@...stemd-random-seed save
>    -TimeoutSec=30s
>    +
>    +# This service waits until the kernel's entropy pool is
>    +# initialized, and may be used as ordering barrier for service
>    +# that require an initialized entropy pool. Since initialization
>    +# can take a while on entropy-starved systems, let's increase the
>    +# time-out substantially here.
>    +TimeoutSec=10min
> 
> This 10min wait thing is really broken... it's basically "forever".

I am so happy to use Sysvinit on my systems again. Depending on entropy 
for just booting a machine is broken¹.

Of course regenerating SSH keys on boot, probably due to cloud-init 
replacing the old key after a VM has been cloned from template, may 
still be a challenge to handle well². I'd probably replace SSH keys in 
the background and restart the service then, but this may lead to 
spurious man in the middle warnings.


[1] Debian Buster release notes: 5.1.4. Daemons fail to start or system 
appears to hang during boot

https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/release-notes/ch-information.en.html#entropy-starvation

[2] Openssh taking minutes to become available, booting takes half an 
hour ... because your server waits for a few bytes of randomness

https://daniel-lange.com/archives/152-hello-buster.html

Thanks,
-- 
Martin