Fwd: Re: /dev/urandom

[doncatnip <gnopap@gmail.com>]

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Of course, I forgot the CC.



-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 	Re: /dev/urandom
Date: 	Wed, 11 Jul 2018 09:58:14 +0100
From: 	Steffen Schulz <gnopap@gmail.com>
To: 	Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name>



I probably got it wrong.

but it seems the programs purpose is to build images (boot loaders). I
then wonder why it needs to do this during installation. If image
building is the programs purpose, it should happen during execution
after installation, no ?

Users would *most likely* prefer it's actual purpose (proper Images,
including optimization) instead of reproducibility.

On 10.07.2018 23:40, Leo Famulari wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 08:58:43PM +0200, Danny Milosavljevic wrote:
>> It writes an image file.  Since that image is later written to flash storage
>> (by the user), the program randomizes the data in order to increase longevity.
>> Then it stores the random data used as well.
> I see. Like Ludo and Mark, I think we should avoid doing tricky things
> with urandom.
>
> Could /dev/zero work here? Does it use urandom once, to get a seed, or
> does it read urandom repeatedly, expecting different values each time?
>
> Also, I wonder if Guix users would want reproducibility here instead of
> longer-lived NAND storage.


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