/proc/sys/kernel/random/poolsize is now 256 instead of 4096 bits, which was already small before. Why was such a change allowed into stable? This also breaks rngd’s --fill-watermark option when not set to percent values. Another reason this should not be changed within a stable series.
Control: severity -1 normal Control: tags -1 wontfix The pool size for an RPNG is only the size of the state, nothing else. It does not in any way describe how much you could get out. Because upstream considered it important enough for their stable release, aka it fixes something important. The kernel does not longer provide a number that could be used here. It might not have had any value before anyway. You just need to reseed on a regular interval. Bastian
Bastian Blank dixit: Yes, and that is the problem. It was small before, it’s ridiculous now. Ugh. I recall reading something about this on LWN, but I thought I had time until bookworm to invent something to deal with this… bye, //mirabilos
Control: severity -1 normal Control: merge -1 1012835 not entirely certain, I'm quite confident that this change was intentional. That and the severity of the bug I'm merging it with has severity normal, is the reason I'm downgrading the severity to normal. I'll leave it up to the maintainer to adjust it if needed. https://lore.kernel.org/all/20220317232804.931702-1-Jason@zx2c4.com/ is probably the closest match of the 'cause' of these changes, but there's a good chance that several patch sets were involved. Here are some more 'random' threads I have found: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20211221175047.341782-1-Jason@zx2c4.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/all/20220201161342.154666-1-Jason@zx2c4.com/ And as already mentioned in the bug I'm merging it with, you're not the only one who noticed: https://forum.openwrt.org/t/low-entropy-22-03-snapshot-change-in-kernel-entropy-pool-logic/129573