"arc4random: no preloaded entropy cache" printed once per CPU on startup

Rebecca Cran rebecca at bluestop.org
Sat Oct 27 22:38:02 UTC 2018


On a normal boot (not verbose) of -CURRENT from today's sources I'm 
getting the following message printed once for each logical CPU:


arc4random: no preloaded entropy cache


Since other messages, including the same one in random_harvestq.c are 
under bootverbose, should this one in arc4random.c be too?


I guess another question is _why_ this message is being displayed, since 
it looks like it should only happen if an entropy stash (/entropy?) is 
missing:


         /*
          * This is making the best of what may be an insecure
          * Situation. If the loader(8) did not have an entropy
          * stash from the previous shutdown to load, then we will
          * be improperly seeded. The answer is to make sure there
          * is an entropy stash at shutdown time.
          */

-- 
Rebecca



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