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SubjectFwd: Linux entropy
Hello,

I've been redirected by  the "friendly bot" to you (I've already looked
into "kernelnewbies" but I didn't find a linked topic). I would want to
know more about the subject below. Is there another possibility to read
the value of current entropy in new versions of kernel ? Are the old
services (as for instance haveged) still compatible ?

Thank you and have a nice evening,

Traian


-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject:     Linux entropy
Date:     Tue, 21 Mar 2023 17:03:36 +0100
From:     Traian Teodorescu <traian.teodorescu@bluewin.ch>
To:     gregkh@linuxfoundation.org


Mr Kroah-Hartmann,

I've recently discovered that the value containing the machine's entropy
(in /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail ) isn't updated anymore on one
of my machines. I found some articles on the Internet about this change,
but nothing very "official".

There is also an explanation at
"https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?h=linux-5.15.y&id=e7e196e1ae2603a2c5f1894f1868a7a5b5a2c5e0"
about keeping forward secrecy, etc, that I didn't really understood.

I began using Linux since less than 10 years and I am not what you can
call an experienced user, but from my point of view this change doesn't
make sense. If I understand well some basic principles, Linux kernel is
the only one meant to be accessible to everybody wanting to understand
deeply how a modern OS works, so what's the gain in this "obfuscation"
?  From my point of view, a sysadmin should know how much entropy they
have on their machines.

So, please, can you please make some comments about this change ? (of
eventually send me a link to an article that I can trust ?)

I really enjoyed Linux a lot those years and I learned to appreciate it,
so from this point of view I am grateful to the teams maintaining free
software, so ... thank you !

Thanks for an eventual answer and have a nice evening,

Traian

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