Post #4481769
2026-08-09 22:45 UTC
@jackemled@furry.engineer Any OS that can’t extract from the background activity of a 2011-era laptop enough entropy to initialize its RNG within a few seconds is broken.
Possibly the system is making an overly-conservative assessment based on portability to some worst-case embedded hardware scenario.
Replies (1)
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@netbsd@mastodon.sdf.org 2026-08-10 07:38
@marshray@infosec.exchange @jackemled@furry.engineer It does do that. It just doesn't count it as increasing the entropy estimate because there isn't a scientific paper detailing how much entropy a hard disk produces. Writing 256 bits to /dev/random should be enough to shut the estimator up permanently, providing safe shutdowns (with shutdown -p now).