Source: autopkgtest
X-Debbugs-Cc: t...@debian.org, s...@debian.org
Hello!
It has come to my attention that autopkgtest currently depends on
rng-tools-debian as provider of rng-tools for its VMs to ensure
entropy is available, or something.
If the entropy provider uses the hwrng subsystem (HRNGDEVICE was
set to, or autodetected as, /dev/hwrng), with recent (at least
bullseye/5.10, but I think even 4.x and perhaps older) kernels
this is no longer necessary as a kernel thread polls the active
device. The (sorry for the German) messages 147, 152, 157 in
Debian #504044 contain a bit more info.
For virtio-rng, basically, it ought to suffice to put a line
virtio_rng
into /etc/initramfs-tools/modules and regenerate the initramfs
and purge rng-tools*. Then, reboot and verify that the node
/sys/devices/virtual/misc/hw_random/rng_current
says virtio_rng.0 (or similar) even without rng-tools-debian’s
initscript writing that value there.
If this isn’t how you use rng-tools I’d like to hear from you,
perhaps we can find something out.
Note that rng-tools-debian 2.5 (just uploaded) will automatically
not start the dæmon if automatic HRNGDEVICE detection finds hwrng.
