Re: /dev/random is hot garbage

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

Taylor R Campbell <campbell+netbsd-tech-kern%mumble.net@localhost> writes:

>> It would also be reasonable to have a sysctl to allow /dev/random to
>> return bytes anyway, like urandom would, and to turn this on for our xen
>> builders, as a different workaround.  That's easy, and it doesn't break
>> the way things are supposed to be for people that don't ask for it.
>
> What's the advantage of this over using replacing /dev/random by a
> symlink to /dev/urandom in the build system?
>
> A symlink can be restricted to a chroot, while a sysctl knob would
> affect the host outside the chroot.  The two would presumably require
> essentially the same privileges to enact.

None, now that I think of it.

So let's change that on the xen build host.

And, the other issue is that systems need randomness, and we need a way
to inject some into xen guests.  Enabling some with rndctl works, or at
least used to, even if it is theoretically dangerous.  But we aren't
trying to defend against the dom0.